


Salt

by Hagar, SailorSol



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles, Power Rangers Mystic Force, Power Rangers Ninja Storm
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Federal Agents, Alternate Universe - Power Rangers, Background Case, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Families of Choice, Faux Crack, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Just Add Ninjas, STH Continuity, Survivors, Team, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 54,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because getting a new agent is not annoying enough, she turns out to be a supernatural ninja.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ninja In a Bag

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. **You don't need to know anything about PRNS.** What you need to know will be explained in the story. (Also, [this](http://www.throng.co.nz/files/u9535/SS.jpg) is Tori.)
> 
> 2\. This story largely follows LA canon with the necessary alterations, so knowledge of NCIS: LA canon is a must. However, as the bulk of it was written before S3 aired, this story's Sam is not married.
> 
> 3\. This story does _not_ follow PRNS canon, but rather exists in the [See the Silence](http://archiveofourown.org/series/6430) continuity.
> 
> 4\. This story was written largely as an exercise in staying sane while writing other lovely fic. Then we decided that actually, we like it that much. However, it... is very much its own thing, so please do not be surprised if encountering the occasional handwave.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A man must eat a peck of salt with his friend, before he knows him.”  
> \- Miguel de Cervantes

“For the last time, G,” said Sam irritably as the two of them walked into HQ. “I am not...”

G elbowed him lightly, but it wasn’t necessary: Kensi and Deeks were very obviously standing in the middle of the room, staring at the bullpen.

“The last time this happened,” G commented as he and Sam came up behind the other two agents, “was when Hettie first arranged the bullpen.”

Kensi, typically, did not twitch. Deeks started, a little. “Yeah, um,” he said.

By then, G and Sam could see what he and Kensi were staring at.

“What is that?” G asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Kensi said.

“I know what it looks like,” Deeks said.

“It looks like a fifth desk,” Sam said.

“Yeah.” G turned around. “Did anyone see Hettie?”

“No, she’s...” Kensi began.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Callen?”

G turned around and looked down at Hettie, who was looking up at him a little too serenely.

“Why do we have a fifth desk?”

“Because Ms. Hansen will join us this afternoon,” Hettie said, handing him the folder she’d been holding. “I trust you will all welcome her well.”

“I’m sorry,” Kensi said, sounding not remotely sorry at all. “Who?”

Hettie had already walked off, though, so G - who was already flipping through the folder - answered her: “Another agent.”

Sam looked about as pleased as G felt, or Kensi sounded. “We don’t need another agent.”

“Yeah, well,” G said. “Do you want to tell that to Hettie, or should I?”

“She likes you better.”

 

* * *

 

Tori Hansen had not yet set foot through the door, and Kensi disliked her already. G had passed on the folder once he was done with it, and so the entire team had memorized Hansen’s personnel file by lunchtime.

Hansen wasn’t an outright probie but, at two years of experience, she might as well be - and Kensi didn’t care how perfect her record or her class grades were, or how shining the recommendations from her previous supervisors. The easy smile and the blonde girl-next-door looks in the folder did not help any, either.

The woman who walked in at two in the afternoon looked slightly different than her photo on file. She was a little older, of course, and the chin-length layers instead of the long braid added to the effect. The photo also couldn’t communicate Hansen’s compact, fluid gait.

“Second-dan in ninjitsu” was one of Kensi’s reasons for disliking the woman before meeting her.

 _At least,_ she thought, a little viciously, _nobody told **her** what to expect._ In dark blue dress slacks and an obnoxiously turquoise shirt, Hansen stuck out like a sore thumb in the informal OSP hub. She stopped by the bullpen, probably because it was the only area on the ground floor that looked anything like a workspace at a first glance.

Sam and G were both studiously ignoring her, or at least seeming to; Kensi knew what it looked like when G was pretending to not survey someone. Deeks, of course, was grinning at the pretty woman.

Kensi would elbow him for it later.

“Hi,” Hansen said, flashing them a relaxed grin that wasn’t helping her case any. “I’m looking for Agent Callen?”

That meant G had to look up. Still, he put on a particularly disinterested manner as he said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

Hansen walked into the bullpen area, stopped in front of G’s desk, offered her hand and said, entirely too cheerfully, “Agent Hansen, reporting for duty.”

G stood up and shook her hand, offering his best crooked lawyer smile. “Welcome to OSP, Agent Hansen.”

“Please, just call me Tori.”

Predictably, G did not offer a first name - or, rather, first initial - in return. “These are the rest of the team: agents Sam Hanna and Kensi Blye, and LAPD liaison Marty Deeks.”

Kensi plastered on a smile and Sam nodded, but Deeks would need to be slapped upside the head later because he grinned at the new girl to split his cheeks. Of course.

Either Hansen was completely oblivious to the lukewarm welcome, or she was a passable actress.

Barely a beat has passed. “Agent Hanna will show you around,” G said, with the gesticulation that went with that smile.

Hansen smiled at Sam. Sam’s sideways glance at G as he stood up said, very clearly, that G was going to be a dead man later.

G’s returning grin said that, as usual, he couldn’t care less.

 

* * *

 

Sam returned a few hours later, carrying a rolled sheet of paper and having left Hansen at Hettie’s desk. He came over to G’s desk, and dumped the sheet of paper in its middle.

G picked it up. It was one of the gun range targets. He rolled it open.

There was a single hole in the middle of the target, too large to be a single bullet but not looking like any cluster G had ever seen. He looked up at Sam, eyebrows raised.

“All bullets on the dot,” Sam confirmed. “Every damn time.”

“Seriously.”

Sam pulled Kensi’s temporarily-unoccupied chair and sat down next to G. “Seriously.”

“Good as advertised?”

“Best I can dry-test her, yeah.”

“Well, at least that tells us why Hettie grabbed her.”

Sam replied with a half-nod.

“Think she’s ready for a wet run?”

Sam’s shoulders twitched in his version of a shrug. “Can’t test her any better in here.”

“All right.” G picked up the folder that Hettie had dropped off earlier and handed it to Sam.

Sam’s irritated glare was as irritated as could be expected. “Why am I on babysitter duty?”

“Because you’ll ride her the hardest,” G said, and immediately continued: “And because I’ll be watching your back, so you’re the one she’s least likely to get killed.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, right. That makes me feel safe.”

 

* * *

 

So maybe Tori was magic with a gun, or a throw knife. And maybe she never, ever lost a sparring match to either Sam or Kensi. And maybe G really did keep giving her the dangerous assignments, but that was because if he was going to risk the lives of anyone he actually knew and liked then he wanted to know that she was really up to the task.

Running into the warehouse that held twenty-or-so heat-packing bad guys and one Tori with only a knife, hoping like hell that they would make it in time, those considerations seemed to matter a little less.

The main floor was quiet when Sam and G barged in through one door and Kensi and Deeks through the other. The only other person standing was Tori, slightly worse for wear but overall whole, one foot on one bad guy’s back and covering the room with two guns.

And smiling like a kid with ice cream. Of _course._

“Do we have zip ties?” she called out to the rest of team. “Because I’m pretty sure we don’t have enough cuffs.”

“Yeah, we do,” G replied even as he surveyed the scene. “We’re going to need ambulances here,” he said into his comm. Every single man on the floor was beat up, bleeding or both.

“On their way,” said Eric’s voice in his ear, overlapping with Sam’s: “You mind explaining what happened here, Tori?”

“They tried to kill me and they’re not my supervising agent, so I beat them up?”

 _That_ made G turn around and pay proper attention to her. “Excuse me?”

“If you keep doing this because you figured I’m going to come out on top, that’s one thing,” she said. “But if that was the case, you wouldn’t abort. So.”

Her tone was what caught his attention, really. Her reply to Sam was standard-issue Tori flip-and-perky, but her reply to him had more straightforward steel than he’s heard from her yet.

“So, let me see if I got this straight,” he said, keeping it flip himself. “Trying to get you killed is okay so long as I don’t worry about you?”

She must’ve got it, because she flashed him a smile. “That’s because there’s no reason to worry.”

 

* * *

 

Kensi’s list of Reasons To Hate Tori Hansen had gotten longer in the twelve weeks they’d had her. Not only was the woman an impossible shot who could take on both Sam and Kensi on the mats, but she was absolutely impossible to shake out of the disgusting friendly perkiness, entirely too damn good at wrapping people around her little finger in the field, and - to add insult to injury - had a big damn motorcycle.

And then it got worse.

G was the first to notice Tori entering that morning, which was no surprise as his desk was facing the door and also because G was a complete cat sometimes, and Tori was carrying a plastic bag.

“What’s in the bag?”

“You’ll see in a second. And good morning, everyone.”

“Good morning,” Sam replied.

“Good morning,” added Deeks, coming up from behind Tori with yet another coffee. “What’s in the bag?”

Kensi glared at him. Tori smiled. She put the bag between her desk and the couch as she sat down, and that meant G had to get up and walk around in order to get to it. Predictably, he’d only gotten behind Tori’s chair when she started bringing out the objects in the bag. The objects that were, unmistakably, framed photos and which G picked up as soon as Tori placed them on the desk.

“Sister,” G said, turning the first photo around towards where Kensi was sitting before putting it down on the table. “Friends,” he said to the second one, which was a group of several people who looked around the same age as Tori. His eyebrows shot up on the third one. “Husband?”

Sure enough, that was a wedding photo, with Tori in what could have just been a nice white dress. But Kensi knew what a wedding dress looked like, and the young man with his arms wrapped around her was definitely wearing a dark blue tuxedo.

A young man that looked remarkably familiar.

“Is that Blake Bradley?”

“I didn’t know you’re a moto fan,” Tori said. “And three out of three,” she added, glancing up at G.

“You’re married. To _Blake Bradley,_ ” Kensi demanded as she got up and came over to take a closer look at that photo.

“Is he famous or something?” G asked.

Kensi looked up from the photo to stare at him, but Deeks got there first.

“He’s only Kensi’s sports star crush,” he said, “if you call riding bikes really fast a sport. Ew!”

Kensi punched his shoulder. Hard.

G’s eyebrows were still raised. “I can’t decide which is weirder,” he said to Kensi. “That Tori is _married,_ or that you fangirl her husband.”

Kensi glared at G, considered hitting him too, but decided it wasn’t worth her effort. She ignored him, instead, turning back to Tori. “How did you two meet?”

Tori shrugged. “Through a friend?”

G held up the last photo, of a teenaged Tori with two boys, the three of them grinning widely at the camera. “One of these friends?”

Tori tapped her finger against the boy in a yellow shirt. “This one.”

“Your husband know where you work?” asked Sam, who’d silently come up behind Kensi in the meantime.

“He knows I’m NCIS,” said Tori, sounding vaguely apologetic in an I’m-entirely-not sort of a way. “Kind of hard to hide that, as he was there before.”

That wasn’t Sam’s military voice, though, and Kensi couldn’t help but think that Tori had misjudged Sam’s intention. By G’s quick look he thought so, too.

“Hey, maybe she can get you his autograph,” Deeks said to Kensi, breaking the sudden tension. “Ew!”

Kensi punched him again.

 

* * *

 

G had seen a lot of really weird shit in this line of work, but impossible mutants that materialized out of thin air were new. He’d emptied a clip into one by instinct, but that just got the brute to focus on him.

The next second, something brilliant blue slammed into the impossible monster, knocking it back. It took G another second to figure out that the brilliant blue something was someone and, specifically, Tori.

Tori, who proceeded to drive off all four impossibilities, including the one that had damn near tore Sam’s arm out of its socket, and then fished out and flipped open her civilian cell phone as the glow faded away, completely ignoring the rest of the team as they regrouped by the cars.

“Hey, is this Jayden?” she asked in a too-sweet voice that could be nothing but bad news. “This is Tori Hansen. Do you know who I am? Of course you don’t.” The sweetness gained an edge on that last one, and then disappeared completely. “I’d say I’m sure Ji can explain it to you but he gave you the run of the show, so right now? I don’t think either of you is fucking up to the fucking job.” Her venomous tone was turning more furious by the word. “Do you fucking mind explaining to me what the fucking fuck were fucking nighloks doing in LA? Of course you didn’t know, if you fucking knew than I wouldn’t fucking need to do your fucking job, would I? No, shut the fuck up, your mewling isn’t interesting. Just fucking do your fucking job from now on, or I’m not the one who’ll call for explanations next time.” She disconnected the call and then immediately punched in something from speed-dial.

G exchanged a look with Sam, but Sam didn’t seem keen on interrupting Tori just yet, either.

“Fucking nighloks on the fucking streets,” Tori said by way of a hello. “Jayden’s fucking clueless. Yes, of course I called him. No, shut the fuck up, Shane, no, I’m not fucking overreacting, my _team_ is fucking here. Yes, _that_ team. Yes. Well, thank you.” She flipped the phone shut and pushed it back into her pocket. Then she finally looked at them, frowning. “Sorry about that,” she said. The murderous rage was gone, but she still didn’t sound quite like Tori.

Or like the Tori they knew. Or thought they knew.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she added at Deeks, who raised his arms and took half a step backwards, very nearly hiding behind Kensi’s back even as G took half a step forward. His weapon was still in his hand, but he hadn’t thought to reload it yet. Sam was behind him, arms crossed, probably trying not to look like he was nursing one of them.

“What the hell was that about?” G demanded.

Tori opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and then said: “That’s a really long story.”

There was a whine of sirens in the distance, which meant the LEOs would be on the scene shortly. G didn’t really feel like playing that game right now. There were too many questions, and he was starting to feel exposed out here on the street. Those monsters - nighlocks? - had appeared out of nowhere, and there was nothing stopping more from showing up. “Boathouse,” he ordered. “You’re riding with me,” he added, pointing at Tori. Like hell he was letting her out of his sight any time soon.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Tori did when they entered the boathouse was make a beeline for the tap and open it. Instead of flowing into the sink, the stream of water snaked around Tori’s arm, glowing the same impossible blue that Tori had before.

Sam didn’t know what to think of that little trick, though Deeks looked like he did when talking about comic books. Kensi’s expression was more neutral as she sat on the edge of the table, watching. G was tense, and it was obvious, at least to Sam, that he was scared, too.

“Care to explain what the hell happened out there?” G demanded. His tone was harsh.

“The most condensed version is that the so-called paranormal exists,” she said. Her tone was expressionless like a soldier’s, but her shoulders were tense and her eyes wide, and her movement as she raised her glowing arm in emphasis could be called jerky on anyone’s scale. “And like with any sort of people, there are normal people and bad people and those whose job it is to stop the bad people. Those things before were the current threat, and they should never have made it here.”

“ _Current_ threat?” Kensi asked. Sam could tell by her tone that she was still trying to process things. Hell, he was too.

“Just like anything else,” Tori repeated. “You stop one and another one rises.”

“Let me guess - Jayden is whoever’s supposed to be dealing with those nighlock things, right?” G asked. His voice had lost its edge, but with his arms crossed and that tone, he was definitely in interrogation mode now.

“Yes.”

It struck Sam in that moment just how _young_ their newest agent was. It wasn’t something he usually thought about, and she usually acted more mature than Deeks on a good day anyway. There was something in the way she stood, though: shoulders too straight and eyes too wide, looking right through them as she answered each question promptly. “Submissive” was _not_ a word he’d associate with Tori under normal circumstances.

Deeks looked like he wanted to start shooting questions at Tori, Kensi’s expression was disturbingly blank, and G was in the middle of freaking out still. Sam’s shoulder hurt like a bitch, and none of the others were being rational about this entire thing, and he gave it five more minutes before Hettie was calling them with questions, so he really wanted answers when that happened.

“All right, that’s enough,” he said towards G. It got him a sullen look, but he just met it calmly until G backed down. He looked back at Tori. “Relax. This isn’t an interrogation,” he told her, trying to keep his tone gentle and steady, ignoring Deeks’ soft snort. “Those monsters were nighlocks, and someone named Jayden is supposed to be dealing with them. Where do you fit in?”

“Seven years ago - almost eight - ” She swallowed. It looked as if she wanted to look away, but she didn’t. Instead, her shoulders straightened. “Then it was us. It was ninjas.” She raised her arm slightly again. “I’m a water ninja, specifically, but,” she shrugged, “we come in several elements. Or without elemental affinity, sometimes.”

“Ninjas,” Sam repeated. The word felt faintly ridiculous; the concept of _ninjas_ had become so sensationalized by the media and pop culture, she might as well have claimed to be an alien. “Jayden’s a ninja too?”

“No,” she said. She paused, hesitating, but G got in first.

“Then what the hell is he?” G demanded.

“I stopped keeping track of kinds of mystical warriors after the first dozen I ran into.”

“Wait, eight years ago, you were, what, seventeen?” Deeks asked.

“Seventeen going on eighteen,” she acknowledged. She smiled a little, weakly. “I refuse to talk about my eighteenth birthday.”

Eighteen was too damn young for that sort of thing. She’d been just a kid, fighting monsters that three federal agents and a police officer couldn’t take on. Finding out monsters were real and their newest teammate was an elemental ninja just seemed like information overload, and the kid was still spooked to all hell. Pushing wasn’t going to get them anywhere right now.

“I’m hungry. Anyone else hungry?” Sam said, forcing his tone towards light and casual. G and Kensi both opened their mouth at the same time, but Deeks got in first.

“I could murder a pizza. There’s a great place just around the corner from here. Probably quicker to just call it in and go pick it up. Kensi and I can go,” Deeks said. He didn’t wait for Kensi’s response, half dragging her out of the boathouse instead.

Which left Sam between an upset G and a freaked out water ninja. Fantastic. At least he knew how to deal with G.

He finally let himself sit down and let go of his left arm, grimacing a little as a fresh wave of pain hit him. His shoulder was probably dislocated, and now that he only had one idiot to deal with, he could check. “A little help here?” he asked G.

“Um.” That was Tori, though, gaze skittering between him and G. “I can fix that. This,” the still-glowing water flowed down her arm and gathered into an orb in her palm, “is good not just for killing things.”

G stepped between Sam and Tori, and Sam had to resist the urge to sigh or shoot his partner. “G, sit down and let the girl show us what she can do. If she wanted any of us dead, she could have just let those monsters tear us apart.”

G, of course, was being his typical stubborn self. Sam couldn’t see the glare his partner was sure to be leveling at Tori though, but it was evident in his posture and tone. “If you hurt him, I won’t give you the chance to regret it.” A promise, not a threat, but at least he stepped aside.

Tori dumped most of the water in the sink, leaving just a thin layer wrapped around her hand like a strange glove.

“I can’t knock out the nerve-endings to it’s going to hurt a little,” she said, voice still too hesitant, if calmer than before, “but it’ll hurt less than the alternative, and there’ll be no residual tissue damage.” She closed the distance between them as she spoke, coming to stand by the chair. “Here we go.” Her hand closed over his shoulder. There was no force in the touch but his shoulder slid back into place without resistance. Sam nearly inhaled sharply at the feeling of tissues sliding and shifting, unlike what having a dislocation forced back usually felt like.

She was right: it hurt, but a whole lot less than the alternative, and when she removed her hand it felt as if he hadn’t been injured at all.

The entire thing had taken a few seconds, at most, from her resting her hand on his shoulder to moving it away, and finally he broke eye contact with G to look down at it, rotating his arm slowly. He gave G a reassuring look before focusing his attention on Tori again, giving her a smile. “Sit down, kid. You did good.”


	2. Team is Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect."  
>   - Herman Melville

Deeks couldn’t remember when they’d had such a bizarre sort of day. Even ignoring the monsters, the sudden turmoil in the team wasn’t exactly normal. He was worried about Kensi, but there wasn’t much he could do for her right now, especially if he didn’t want to end up as her punching bag for the next hour or so. She just needed time and space to think things through. In the meantime, he could help Sam calm Tori down, and maybe learn some more about what a water ninja did.

“What am I looking at?” Sam asked.Tori had just handed him one of the pictures off her desk. Deeks went to look over his shoulder; it was the photo of the group of seven, the one Deeks had joked looked like some sort of rainbow with the array of colors they’d all been wearing.

“My team,” Tori said. “My old team,” she added, as if correcting.

“They’re all ninjas too?” Deeks asked.

“Cam isn’t,” she said, pointing to the Asian guy in green on the right. “But he’s the son of one, and he’s psionic.”

Sam beat Deeks to the question this time. “Psionic?”

“Telepathy, empathy, telekinetics, precog, the works.”

If Deeks hadn’t seen what Tori could do first hand, he’d have thought she was just leading them on. This was stuff straight out of his childhood comic books, but she was standing there telling them that it was real. He couldn’t help but grin a little. “Sweet.”

Tori snorted. “Not so much when you’re sixteen and have no one to teach you, and your best friends are being retards.”

“And the rest of them?” Sam asked, gesturing towards the picture again in emphasis. Typical of him, always keeping the rest of them on track.

“Shane,” Tori said, point to the guy in red who - in the photo - was to her left. “Air. Team leader. You know me. Dustin, Earth.” That was the guy in yellow in the same grouping with Cam, who had introduced Tori to her husband. “Hunter and Blake, both Thunder, though there’s a whole lot of lightning involved. Marah,” the woman between Cam and Dustin, “wasn’t team. She’s Cam’s cousin.”

“But she’s a ninja too,” Sam said, more a statement than a question.

“Yeah. Non-elemental.” Her finger remained next to the photo, hovering back to the cluster that had Tori and Blake. “Hunter is Blake’s big brother.”

The two looked about as similar as Deeks and Sam did. Asking if one of them was adopted would have just been an unnecessary question.

Tori swallowed. “Anyway,” she said, putting the photo back down on the desk. “Shane might drop by to say hi. Try to not shoot him.”

“Dropping by?” Sam asked. “He shouldn’t even know this office exists.”

“Did I say he’ll drop by here?” Tori retorted, sounding like herself for the first time since the monsters showed up. “Knowing Shane, he’ll think that waiting in your kitchen is perfectly okay. And,” she shook her head, “not telling Shane something doesn’t mean he’s not going to know.”

“Maybe you should warn him to steer clear of Callen’s house,” Deeks suggested. He’d heard enough to know how long it took Sam and Hettie to get Callen to finally settle down someplace. He was more paranoid than the rest of them put together.

Tori snorted again. “That’ll just make sure he’ll do it. He’s managed to not get himself killed _yet,_ so.”

 

* * *

 

There was someone sitting on the two steps leading up to his front porch. G could see that even from the street, and it made him pause with the car there rather than pull into the driveway.

There was someone sitting on the front porch of his _house_ after dark. At least the someone was visible in the porch light: male, big guy, twenties or thirties, definitely not White, in a sweatshirt and jeans. That was all G could tell from across the street.

He killed the engine and got out of the car.The plan was to walk past the gate but, from that shorter distance, G could see the stranger’s face. He’d never met the man, but he knew who that was.

Tori’s Shane stood up, as if in response to G’s pause.

“Shane, right?” G said, keeping his tone light but his hand near his weapon anyway.

“Yeah,” said Shane. The smile seemed genuine, but his posture was a little too relaxed. He spread his arms slightly to the side, empty hands clearly visible. Of course, if he was anything like Tori, that didn’t mean much. _Fucking ninjas._ “Thought I’d drop by to say hi.”

“Tori tell you where I live?” It was half-statement, half-question. There were very few people who knew G’s address, after all. On paper, the house belonged to someone else, a figment of Hettie’s imagination.

“Nah.” This time it was the smile of a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’m probably going to get yelled at good for this, too.” Then the smile vanished and he stuffed his hands in his pockets, shrugging a little as he did so. “You do know about us.”

A thousand protocols and scenarios started whirring through G’s brain as he tried to figure out where the security breach had been and how big of an impact it might have. The fact that this was Tori’s friend meant that he might not have to move. He _liked_ this house. “Yeah, I know about you. So what do you want?”

Shane’s eyebrows rose. “Tori calls you guys her team now, y’know.”

“Your point?” G asked.

“It means something to her,” Shane said, a little more quietly. “It means something to me. I hope it means something to you, too.”

If he hadn’t sounded so damn serious, G probably would have shot off some sort of flippant response. A few days ago, he probably would have, anyway. But a few days ago, he hadn’t known that giant tentacled monsters actually existed or that the newest member of his team had been some sort of teenaged superhero. He really hated weeks like this.

He wanted to tell this kid that office politics weren’t any of his business, but G did actually care enough about Tori not to pick fights with her friends. Besides, the lecture he’d get from Sam wasn’t worth it. “Look, if you’re worried that we’re going to kick her out or something, don’t be.”

Shane huffed. “Thanks,” he said dryly, and then shrugged. “Look, man, I realize this is weird, and I’d be pissed if Tori or Hunter did something like that over me, but - Tori and I have been best friends since we were nine, we’ve been through a whole lot of shit together, and you guys are the first new people who matter since the shit hit the fan all those years ago. So I’m sorry if I’m getting this all wrong, okay?”

G considered him for a long moment. He wasn’t used to having to deal with conversations like this, not about the people he worked with. It wasn’t as if Sam, Kensi, or Deeks had much of a life outside of work any more than G himself did. And getting lectured by a twenty-something year old kid like he was Tori’s first boyfriend... well, that was just bizarre, even on the scale of all the other shit that had happened in the last few days.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is a dangerous job. But if it’s within my power to keep her from getting hurt, I will,” G reassured him. Hopefully that would be enough to make Shane go away.

Maybe it was, because Shane stepped down to the garden path. “It’s not the bad guys that might hurt her. And if any more of the things that go bump in the night drop by,” he continued as he walked down the path, towards G and towards the damn gate, “then you’re not going to be stranded.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said dryly.

Shane took his sweet time meandering down the path to where G held the gate open in a not-so-subtle hint. “I like you,” he told G as he passed him by, grinning as he said so. “My husband would kill you,” he added over his shoulder, “but I like you.”

And then he was just _gone._

 

* * *

 

G and Kensi were at their desks, with Sam sitting on G’s, and Tori didn’t need to ask to know that something was wrong, or - the second G’s eyes locked on her - to know what, exactly, was wrong.

Still, she said “Good morning,” as cheerfully as if she hadn’t and walked right past Sam, heading for her own desk. Her desk which was right next to _G’s,_ who was glaring death at her, and oh god Shane was a fucking dead man.

“Probably would have been a better morning if I’d gotten any sleep last night,” G said with that tone that sounded like Hunter.

“I’ll make sure to mention that when I tell Shane he’s fucking dead,” she said as she dropped her bag at her desk but did not sit down, keeping the length of two desks between her current team leader and herself. “I’m assuming that’s what happened?”

“He came by my place, too,” Sam volunteered. At least he sounded amused by it.

“Told you he might.”

“Care to explain how he got my address?” G asked.

“Asked Cam for it, probably,” she said, far more calmly than she felt. “Psionic genius hacker?”

She really couldn’t fault G for that look.

“Your friend must’ve had a busy night,” Kensi said. “I ran into him at a bar.”

Tori made herself shrug. It looked forced and she knew it, but this was as good as it got. “Probably dropped by Deeks’, too. Team is team.”

“Yeah, I got that,” G said with that dry edge of sarcasm.

Before anyone else could say anything, Deeks walked in with a cheerful “Morning, all.”

“What’s got you so cheerful?” Kensi asked.

Deeks sat down in his chair, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the bullpen. “Free coffee always makes me cheerful.”

Tori was beginning to get a really bad feeling about this. She reached into her pocket, already looking for the Cam-rigged cell phone.

“Free coffee?” Kensi asked suspiciously.

Tori pulled out the phone.

“Yeah, Tori’s friend bought it for me after my run this morning,” Deeks replied.

She hit number two on speed dial. Shane, predictably, picked up on the first ring.

“Hi, Tori.”

“I hate you,” she informed him, and disconnected the call. She grit her teeth and made herself look up. Kensi looked as upset as could be expected, Deeks was continuing his Dustin-morning, god only knew what Sam was thinking and the same could be said of G, really.

At least he looked a little less like Hunter.

“How many times have I told you not to accept food from strangers?” Kensi lectured Deeks.

“He’s not really a stranger, is he? I mean, he’s Tori’s friend,” Deeks replied.

 _Shapeshifters exist,_ Tori thought, but did not say. More paranoia was the last thing this team needed.

“Look, no one got hurt. Your friend is trustworthy, right?” Sam asked her.

The only good thing about being that tense was that she managed to snort, instead of burst into hysterical laughter. _He’s team,_ she almost said, but if they didn’t get it yet they weren’t going to. “We’re practically siblings,” she said instead, hoping that _that_ would at least mean anything to anyone. “And you know something sensitive about him, too. And me,” she added, because that’s what it was about. “So yeah, he’s trustworthy.”

“So G, you don’t have to move again, and Deeks isn’t going to die from a cup of coffee,” Sam said. “Now can we all just do some _work_?”

Thank goodness for Sam, Tori thought as she maneuvered towards her chair, moving slowly and keeping a side glance at G the whole time.

 

* * *

 

G didn’t want Tori with them at Yemen. She didn’t belong there, and for a whole lot of reasons. You didn’t bring too many agents along, on an op like this, so far from home. Things got messy when you did. Sam and G knew each other and knew the job; Nate was acceptable because they knew him and he knew them, and apparently he knew something about staying alive, too. Tori was still a rookie agent - magic ninja skills be damned - and she did not belong on a long-range, high-risk op.

Problem was, Hettie thought otherwise.

It wasn’t _all_ Hettie’s fault, though. Yes, the ninja was Hettie’s pet idea. Yes, Hettie kept pushing him to push the girl forward. Hettie had also made Tori report to G rather than Hettie herself, though, unofficial as G’s first-among-equals status was. And G had handed Tori to Sam, which seemed like the reasonable thing to do. He’d counted on Sam being Sam, which meant suspicious and demanding.

He hadn’t counted on Tori attaching to Sam like the proverbial duckling, or on Sam taking a shine to the girl. G would take it back and let Kensi do Tori’s field assessments, if he could: Sam only ever backed the girl up, anyway.

At least she was gone for the moment, off getting lunch somewhere. And probably getting herself killed in the process. G was pretty sure she had no language skills, at least nothing more than the bare basics in a few languages, and a blue-eyed, blonde haired woman would stick out like a sore thumb in their current location.

Realistically, he knew that she wouldn’t actually get herself killed. Probably leave a trail of bodies in her wake. Anyone who tried anything with her would be in for a hell of a shock. Nate had raised his eyebrows when G didn’t say anything when Tori left, but Nate didn’t know what she was capable of.

“Who is she, again?” Nate asked once they were on their own. He was collapsed in the chair, looking as if he was about to take advantage of the rare luxury of having someone to watch his back. “I don’t remember her, and you didn’t exactly introduce us.”

“Tori Hansen. Hettie assigned her to the team a few months ago,” G replied. At least she didn’t have Nate eating out of the palm of her hand already, too.

Nate raised his eyebrows again. “Big assignment for a new agent.”

“Hettie likes her,” was his casual reply. He couldn’t exactly add _And she’s some crazy water ninja, too_.

“Hettie likes her,” Nate repeated, mirroring. He leaned forward, too, forearms on knees. “But you don’t?”

G glared at Nate. “I didn’t come here to have you get inside my head, Nate. I’ve known you too long for your tricks to work.”

“I’m not your operational psychologist here, G. But we all depend on each other, here, and what you think about her matters to me.”

“I think she’s a halfway decent agent who doesn’t have enough experience to be on a mission like this,” G replied. That was close enough to the truth, though Nate would probably be able to tell it wasn’t the full truth.

So G was not surprised when Nate asked, a little too neutrally, “Is that why you won’t even look at her?”

“I’ll look at her,” G said defensively. “What, you expect me to be watching her every second? I think you’ve been out here in the desert too long, Nate.”

Nate just looked at him. G hated that look.

“ _What_?” he demanded. The bastard had the balls to sit there and look smug while he waited; they’d played this game too many times for Nate not to know that sometimes all he had to do was wait. Most people, G would just ignore, but Nate wouldn’t let up until G gave him _something_. “She’s like some mutant Chernobyl duckling,” he finally said, more harshly than he had intended, but Nate was the only person he could actually talk to about any of this without getting looked at like he’d just kicked someone’s puppy.

Even if Nate was blinking like his eyes were broken. “How is she a duckling?” he asked.

“I suppose you haven’t had the chance to watch her follow Sam around, have you. She’s all cute and fluffy looking, but this one? She’s got teeth in that tiny little duckling beak of hers. Big, sharp, pointy ones,” G added, curling his fingers in front of his mouth in emphasis. If Nate didn’t get the Monty Python reference, that was his loss, really.

Nate raised his eyebrows, just a little, and made a small _‘ah’_ nod as he leaned back in the chair. “So she’s Sam’s duckling? How does Sam feel about that?”

“Oh, Sam loves it, of course. You know how he is about taking in strays. Not that you really know Deeks, but really, two in one year, isn’t that a bit much?” G replied. “I mean, Sam didn’t _keep_ Deeks, Kensi did, but he followed Sam home.”

“Yes, Sam looks out for people,” Nate acknowledged. “But from what I remember, he stays distant for a while. Tori would make a first exception. Sounds pretty special.”

“Oh, not you too,” G moaned. “Seriously? You’ve barely even met the girl. Did she cast some sort of spell on you when I wasn’t looking or something?”

“Nope, no spell,” Nate said. “All I know is what you’re telling me, G.”

“Of course you’d say that,” he grumbled. He didn’t _think_ she could do anything like that, but hell, a month ago, he hadn’t even known water ninjas existed. “She’s a _menace_. And she upsets the balance of things at the office.”

“Uh-huh,” Nate said. It sounded suspiciously, if vaguely, mocking. “By taking away Hettie’s and Sam’s attention?”

G laughed. “You think that’s what this is about?”

“G, if you really thought she was a security hazard, this is not how you would go on about it. Do you know what you sound like? You sound like a five-year-old who wants to drown his brand-new baby sister so he can be an only child again.”

“You want to take back that last sentence and pretend like you never said it?” G asked, tone shifting towards hard and dangerous.

“If that’s what you want.”

 

* * *

 

Nate’s conversation with G had only shed so much light on the new agent. At least he knew G’s problems with her were personal and not professional, which in the grand scheme of things didn’t say all that much, either. G took personal issue with a lot of people. But G also apparently trusted Tori to take care of herself, and to watch Sam’s back, which meant that the agent’s comment about Tori being a _halfway decent agent_ was probably an understatement.

All that essentially boiled down to Nate getting to know her himself. She certainly didn’t seem like the menace G made her out to be, though his odd statements about mutant ducklings with teeth and casting spells had the odd ring of truth to them, which worried Nate. That was out of character even for G.

G, who had practically stormed out of the hotel room when Tori had returned with food. Nate had hit low, he knew that, but sometimes G needed to be smacked upside the head with things he didn’t want to acknowledge, and neither Sam nor Hettie was there to do it at the moment. But with G gone, that left Nate alone with Tori.

“Hey, we weren’t properly introduced earlier. My name’s Nate,” he said, going over to offer her a hand to shake.

Her handshake was firm but relaxed, and the smile seemed genuine. “Tori Hansen.”

“So, uh, how are you liking working at OSP so far?” he asked. He wasn’t really all that good at small talk, and he was doing his best not to analyze her straight off the bat, but professional habits were rather ingrained for him.

The quickly-flashed grin, too, seemed genuine. “Wicked fun.”

Nate raised an eyebrow at her. With the way G had to have been treating her, Nate wouldn’t have expected _wicked fun_ to be her first choice. Apparently, she was going to give him the brick wall treatment. He was used to getting that from people, though. Most people, when they found out he was a psychologist, would put up that front. “So G says that everyone back home thinks rather highly of you.”

That got him the third smile in not even half a minute. This one, though, had something cynical and deprecating - perhaps self-deprecating - lurking in its angles. “Is that what he said.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Nope.”

“How well do you know Agent Callen?” Nate couldn’t come straight out and ask if she knew about G’s life growing up. It wasn’t his place, and some of the things Nate knew were on a professional level. But even with the little Nate knew about G’s issues with this girl, he knew past issues weren’t entirely unrelated.

That gave her a pause. When she spoke again, her voice lost the perky coat. “The ‘G’ part is a little hard to miss,” she said. “My husband grew up in foster care.”

“Ah.” There wasn’t much more to say to that one. “He’ll warm up to you eventually,” he added. “Just give him time.”

You had to hand it to the girl: her “Huh?” expression was perfect. He’d seen the looks she gave G before, out of the corner of her eyes, and he’d already seen enough to know that she was too still.

“If it helps, he does think you’re a good agent,” Nate offered.

She snorted a little, and her shoulders straightened in confidence that wasn’t overexpressed. “I wouldn’t still be at OSP otherwise.”

Well, at least she hadn’t let G tear her down. That had to count for something.

 

* * *

 

It happened fast. That was the way it was, half the time, when shit went to hell in a handbasket. This time was, in a way, slower than most. They were parked inside the van at a safe distance from the village, listening in, when Abdul made it clear he was going to shoot the boy. G started the car before Abdul was done talking.

That Sam’s cover was blown wasn’t the problem. The problem was what Sam might do when a seven-year-old boy was about to get shot in front of his eyes.

Having been at a ‘safe distance’ from the village meant that they were still driving when the shouts rose and then turned to gunfire, and the voice that screamed was definitely the little boy’s.

For a split second the car rocked, the sound of the wind impossibly loud - the wind impossibly strong inside the closed compartment - and then there was a too-loud thud and the noise was over, but Tori was not in the passenger’s seat where she should have been.

“What the hell?” demanded Nate.

“Damn it,” G swore.

Simultaneously, Eric said over the comm: “I lost Tori’s signal!”

At least they reached the strip of pressed-down dirt that passed for the village’s main road. Up ahead, G could see -

“We have visual,” he told Eric, and everyone else at Ops. “She’s pulled one of her damn ninja tricks.”

By the time they reached the circle of collapsed bodies, Tori was already helping Sam up into a sitting position. Sam’s clothes were ripped and stained as if he’d been shot, but there was surprisingly little blood and he seemed aware, uninjured.

Tori’s magical healing powers. Again.

“Don’t try to get up for a few minutes,” she told Sam and then, without skipping a beat, “they’ll wake up in a few. Or not, they’re dehydrated pretty bad.” She straightened and finally bothered to look in his and Nate’s direction. “I’m going after Abdul. I’ll be back later.”

And then she was gone, disappeared into a black streak leading into the horizon.

“What the hell just happened here?” asked Nate again.

G tore his gaze away from the no-longer-there streak. “She’s a damned ninja,” he told Nate. “A damned superpowered ninja. You okay?” he asked Sam.

“Am now.”

“Agent Callen?” demanded Hettie’s voice over the comm.

“Yeah, we’re all fine here, Hettie,” he told her. “Once Nate recovers from the shock. Tori pulled some sort of superspeed, though. She could be halfway across the country by now.”

“That would probably be how she broke her GPS,” Eric added.

“Just get her back online.”

“Yeah, if whatever she did physically broke it?” Eric shot back.

G’s phone rang. He answered it with a short: “Yeah?”

“This is Cam Watanabe,” snapped the voice on the other end. “What just happened?”

“I get the feeling I should be asking you for answers,” G replied, squatting down next to Sam to put a hand on his partner’s shoulder.

“Something just got Tori angrier than she’d been in seven years, and I need to know what that was.”

“Best I can tell? My partner just got shot, she dropped a dozen men in less than a minute, healed him, and took off again.”

There was a split-second of silence, and then, “Splendid,” Cam spat in a remarkably caustic tone. “That would explain it. Do you still have a signal on her?”

“No, we....”

Cam cut him off. “I’ll patch you live coordinates. She’ll be dehydrated and she’ll be angry, do not say or do anything at all she might interpret as accusatory if she squints at it sideways - which she will - and get all the drinking water that you can. And please, don’t get shot again. Actually, none of you should get so much as a paper cut for the next month or so, for Tori’s sanity’s sake.”

And the line was severed.

“I got a signal again,” Eric said.

G swore again, standing up. “Stay with Nate,” he told Sam. “I’m going after her.”

 

* * *

 

It took G almost two hours to catch up to Tori. The coordinates Eric had given him led him to a cave on a hillside that was damn near impossible to get to. He spent most of the time swearing and thinking about what Tori’s friend Cam had said, the water in the pack heavy on his back. He was going to kill her himself when he got there, if she hadn’t gotten herself killed in the process of doing whatever the hell it was she was doing.

He took a moment to collect himself when he reached the ledge outside the cave, pulling his weapon and checking it, squinting into the darkness for a moment before moving off to the side of the mouth, calling in.

“You in there, Hansen?”

A beat later, her voice rang out, distorted by echoes: “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She didn’t sound like she was in distress, so he took a chance and stepped inside, pausing to let his eyes adjust. The cave wasn’t very deep, maybe twenty feet carved out of rock, and Tori was standing a few feet away from the body - Abdul - on the ground.

“It’s called backup,” he snapped before remembering Cam’s words. He tried to force calm into his voice. “You shouldn’t run off like that.”

She snorted. “Needed to catch up with that piece of shit. Like there’s anything here that can hurt me.”

“After that stunt you pulled earlier?” He shook his head at her, dropping the pack off his back. He pulled a bottle of water out and tossed it at her. “By the way, your friend Cam called.”

She caught the bottle and cracked it open in a single gesture, lifting it to her lips immediately. She flinched at the mention of Cam, though.

“Seemed pretty worried about you,” he continued, taking out a bottle of water for himself.

She capped the empty water bottle and let it drop. “Cam worries.”

“He’s not the only one.”

“So,” she continued in the same unconcerned voice as before, “you want to stay for the show? Or I suppose you’re here to tell me to get it over with.”

“I’m here to tell you we’re done here,” he said. “Sam and Nate have got things handled in the village, and Hettie’s arranged a flight home.”

“Fucking airplanes are drier than the fucking desert, did you know that?” She walked over to Abdul and kicked him over. “Dead or alive? I’m thinking alive, with an aneurysm. Locked-in syndrome sounds nice.”

G looked at the man who’d shot his partner; he looked uninjured, but there were blood stains on the ground, and even in the dim light coming from outside, there was pain in his expression. He looked, for lack of a better word, pathetic. But G couldn’t quite bring himself to feel sorry for this particular piece of scum.

“No,” he said, kneeling down in front of Abdul to look him in the eye. “We’re going to leave him here - alive. Dehydrated, but alive.” He could see the look of fear and understanding in Abdul’s eyes. It made him smile, just a little.

“Done,” Tori said. “Though I’ll keep him flaccid until we’re out of range, if you don’t mind.”

He stood up again. “That’s fine. You should drink another bottle of water before we leave.”

“No, really,” she retorted, but she walked over to where he’d left the bag and picked up one of the bottles. “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

She finished the water bottle in a single long gulp, as before, but this time did not drop it. “These aren’t biodegradable, right? So we should probably pick them up.”

He stepped next to her, putting a hand on her arm. “You did good today, Tori.”

He didn’t expect her to turn in for a hug, holding on with quite a bit of strength and burying her face in his shoulder. It took him a moment to react, but then he wrapped his arms around her, doing his best to offer what comfort he could.


	3. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I didn't go back today,   
> I wanted to show you that I was more land than water,   
> I went to pick flowers. I brought them to you,   
> Look at me, look at them, with their salt up the stem."  
>   - Dar Williams

It didn’t surprise Nate _too_ much that G barely spoke at all during the six-hour ride back to Sana’a. It also didn’t surprise him - once he thought of it - that Tori had spent most of said drive asleep. What did surprise him, somewhat, was that Tori had fallen asleep on G’s shoulder and that G acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world, going as far as to put his arm around the younger woman.

Whatever had happened between those two, Nate would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall for it.

 _Ninjas._ What was the world coming to.

Sam had filled him in, somewhat, but Nate could tell the blanks were there even through his own shock and Sam’s exhaustion. The question of how such a delicate subject came to light was one glaringly obvious omission. G’s comments on ‘mutant Chernobyl ducklings’ with sharp teeth did not suggest anything too peaceful. Another omission was apparent in the mystery phone call that had sent G into the mountains and which Sam claimed no knowledge of.

Six hours were a long time to think about things, particularly as Nate and G were the only ones properly awake in that car, and G was being as talkative as the average boulder.

Which, really, with Sam and Tori both asleep, shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

Eventually, though, they had to wake the two. There was only one flight daily going out of Sana’a to the UAE, from where they could catch a plane home, and they’d missed that day’s. Nate stopped the car and waited, preferring to let G wake up the other two.

“Get us a couple of rooms, will you?” G asked. “And something to eat. And water.”

Nate knew a request for privacy when he heard it. “Sure,” he said. He tossed G the keys before leaving the car.

 

* * *

 

Several hours ago, Sam thought he was going to die - honest to goodness, bullets in his chest, _die_. Now he was sitting in a hotel room with G, Nate, and Tori, still trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Not that he was feeling ungrateful for being alive, but he had a million questions racing through his head that he’d been waiting to ask.

 _Still_ waiting to ask, because Tori had claimed the bathroom before they’d barely made it into the room and G had spent the entire time sitting on the corner of the bed staring at the bathroom door in stony silence. Nate, who had just returned with food and bottled water, knew even less about the situation than Sam did.

No one made a move for the food. Sam wondered if they were just going to continue there in silence, none of them moving. But then G was on his feet, fast enough to make Sam startle even though he’d been watching his partner carefully. G knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, food’s here. More water, too.” His tone was softer than it usually was with Tori, and Sam could hear the edge of worry there.

“Coming,” called Tori’s voice from the bathroom, pitched just strongly enough to carry. There was some splashing and, a moment later, Tori padded out, dressed in a tank top and sports-shorts, wet hair dripping water all over the place. She looked pale and gaunt - sickly, almost, though Sam couldn’t remember her having ever been sick before. He couldn’t ever remember her without makeup, either. The dim light from the desk lamp and the light from the bathroom behind her was far from flattering.

She paused briefly next to G, hand resting lightly on his forearm for just a moment. G nodded at her, which seemed to be some sort of permission or understanding between them, because she made a beeline for the food after that.

“Oh, great, halva,” she said, picking up one of the blocks - at least two pounds, by Sam’s estimate - and sitting down cross-legged on the nearest bed, opening the paper wrap and crumbling out bits of the confection. “God, I'm starving.” She glanced up at Sam. “You okay?” she asked between bites.

“Thanks to you,” he replied, watching in somewhat sick fascination as she inhaled food at a rate faster than even Kensi usually did.

She shrugged, and said, “Team, right?” as if it should have been obvious, and Sam had missed a line in the script somehow. Or maybe didn’t get the script at all, because G replied before Sam had the chance.

“Right.”

Sam gave his partner a long look. “Either of you going to share what the hell happened up there in the mountains?”

Tori glanced up at G, but G’s eyes were focused on Sam with a startling amount of intensity. The question wasn’t meant to be a loaded one, but the tension in the room increased and Sam caught himself holding his breath as he waited for an answer.

“We dealt with Abdul,” G replied, sounding for all the world like he’d just said they’d washed the dishes or taken out the garbage and not like they’d gone after the man who’d shot Sam. He wasn’t stupid; if Tori could heal Sam’s bullet wounds, there probably wasn’t much she _couldn’t_ heal. And healing was harder than breaking.

“And by ‘dealt with’, you mean...?” Nate asked, keeping his voice a particular shade of neutral.

Nate wasn’t stupid, either.

“We didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re wondering,” G replied. Sam felt a pang of something - disappointment? He wasn’t sure.

“There are many ways to deal with someone other than killing them,” Nate said, and the neutrality was getting a little less warm and a little more professional.

Tori swallowed down another bite of halva; she’d eaten her way through half a pound already. “He was alive and unharmed when we left him,” she said, faking normalcy better than either G or Nate. “Really.”

Nate gave both her and G suspicious looks. “You let him go,” he said skeptically.

“Yes,” G replied. “We weren’t in a position to take prisoners.”

For whatever reason, Tori’s eyes travelled to Sam.

“Leave it be, Nate,” Sam told him. “You’ll probably be happier not pushing at this any harder.”

“Thanks for the reassurance, Sam,” Nate said dryly.

“Does anybody mind getting the fucking lights, by the way?” asked Tori. Sam knew that particular shade of casual: Tori reserved it for things that were more serious than she’d care to admit. The swearing was an indication, too. “While you’re still standing around for some obscure reason?”

G flipped the light switch even as Sam turned on the lamp closest to himself. The room did seem less gloomy this way, pushing the events of the day further into the past. But the sudden flood of light afforded Sam a better view of Tori, and he couldn’t help but stare at the pale scars tracing up and down her arms and legs and across her face.

“What?” asked Tori seconds later. “You’re staring at me like I'm turning into a giant insect or something.”

G and Sam exchanged a brief look before G said anything. “You’re not wearing any makeup.”

She blinked, and then her eyes turned large and her shoulders dropped. She lifted her right hand, but aborted the motion a few inches in. “Right,” she said blankly. Her gaze dropped to the lines on her thighs. “Sorry,” she added. “I totally forgot.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Sam said. He shared another look with G before continuing. “You should see G’s scars some time,” he added, with forced levity.

Tori’s eyes turned even wider, somewhere between scared and worried.

G, predictably, pulled up his t-shirt to reveal the scars on his chest and stomach. “Hey, my scars are sexy,” he said, with that little-boy grin that drove Sam nuts sometimes. Sam couldn’t bring himself to look at the scars.

At least the fright passed, even if Tori was still distinctly hunched and she hadn’t touched the halva since she asked why they were staring. Her eyes lingered on G’s scars for a long moment. Then she nodded, slowly.

“Scars aren’t like normal injuries, once they set in,” she said, staring down at the bed cover. “They take a lot of time, even if you have enough power to spare.” Pause. “It took Cam three weeks to get to us.”

It was G who finally broke the silence. “Tori...”

Her eyes snapped up to him, expression switching from pain to concern in a heartbeat. “Hey, it was a long time ago, anyway,” she said, forced cheer entirely too brittle. “Also, if you were Shane, this is about where I'd tell you to stop being a fucking moron and come sit down already.”

Sam could have laughed at the expression on G’s face; it was almost as shocked as Tori’s was horrified as she realized what she’d just said out loud. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready for today to be over. I’m bunking with Nate as there’s no way in hell I’m putting up with G’s weird sleeping habits,” Sam declared, giving Nate a significant look.

“I wouldn’t dream of forcing you through that,” Nate said dryly, pushing himself up from that chair.

At least Tori started on the halva again. Sam grabbed a bottle of water for himself as he headed for the door.

Tori intercepted him as he passed by the bed she’d been sitting on. “Hey,” she said, and that was all the warning he had before she pushed herself up and clung to him briefly. “Glad you’re alive.”

He returned the hug. “Me too,” he replied. “Someone has to keep the two of you in line.”

Quietly but clearly, Nate snorted.

 

* * *

 

Just because they gave him a headache, didn’t mean that the situation he’d walked into wasn’t predictable.

Sam, G and Tori went their separate ways after landing at LAX. They all needed a shower - for understandable reasons - and Tori was fully intent on passing through that houseboat of hers, which was understandable as well, considering that the girl was (still) married. Besides, home and a change of clothes sounded like a good idea regardless.

Given G’s idea of ‘home’, though, Sam was entirely unsurprised to find G at his desk, wearing a shirt that he’s definitely borrowed off Hettie’s rack. Knowing G, it was also not a surprise to find Kensi prowling around and Deeks sitting on the edge of his desk, or that the two of them pounced on Sam as soon as he’d stepped in.

He knew and loved his teammates, but occasionally he still wanted to throttle them.

“How was your trip?” Kensi asked, a little too cheerfully.

“Next time I’m taking my holiday somewhere else,” he said. He eyed G over her shoulder, but his partner was firmly ignoring him.

“I hear Yemen’s nice this time of year,” Deeks commented.

Sam gave him a Look. “You heard wrong. Desert’s still a desert.”

Kensi and Deeks shared a look as Deeks muttered: “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

G snorted softly. “He was sharing a room with Nate.”

“At least Nate sleeps for more than twenty minutes at a time,” Sam fired back.

“I can’t help that I find power naps more restful,” G said.

“Well, I almost died. I needed my rest.”

“Wait, what?” Kensi asked. “No one said anything about you almost dying. Are you okay?”

“Sam’s just exaggerating again,” G said, but Sam could hear the forced casualness in his voice. Everybody needed a hero; sometimes, Sam was G’s.

“Let’s just say that Tori came in handy,” he said.

“Is anyone going to bother telling the rest of us what happened?” Deeks asked.

“Abdul set up the whole thing to acquire me as a hostage. He tried to kill me, Tori broke the sound barrier or something and then patched me up. End of story.”

Two pairs of eyes focused on G, who simply shrugged. “Tori did a good job.”

That got Sam’s attention. G of four days before would have never openly said that about the girl, let alone call her by her first name. The tone of his voice was definitely not the one Sam had heard in that hotel room at Sana’a, or on the plane as he made sure Tori had a constant supply of water. It was too cool, if not outright distant, not the way G could be distant.

Sam needed to be told what had happened, too.

As if on cue, Tori’s voice rang out: “Hi, guys.”

Sam eyed her as she came down the aisle and joined them at the bullpen. These were the oldest jeans and T-shirt he’d seen her wear yet, and her hair could have used a few more minutes with the brush. At least she didn’t seem gaunt and sickly, anymore.

“Welcome back,” Deeks greeted her. “Sam was just telling us how you’re his new hero.”

Sam shot Deeks a dirty glare. Kensi’s partner didn’t even have the decency to cringe.

“Just a few bullet holes,” Tori said with a shrug and a smile. “Clean through-and-throughs. No problem.”

Sam didn’t even try glaring at her. If she didn’t get it already, he wasn’t trying again at least until the next week.

“Bullet holes?” Kensi asked suspiciously.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “Did I mention that Abdul tried to kill me?” His attention was on Tori and G as she settled down at her desk, though. No furtive glances and nearly-visible ice, as before Yemen; no eye-conversations and reaching out for each other, as they’d been the past few days. Just two people moving near each other’s space.

 _Now_ what was going on with them?

“Actually, by that angle, I’m pretty sure he tried to shoot the kid. What?” she said, in response to the three glares leveled at her; she was looking at Sam, though. “They’re going to see it in the report anyway.”

Too smooth, too round-eyed. They hadn’t seen this Tori since they found out she was a ninja.

She and G were both putting up their professional fronts. Whatever had brought them together, whatever had happened in that cave, it had to have touched a nerve for both of them.

Deeks looked at Kensi. “We always miss the exciting stuff, don’t we?”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Hettie muttered. The sound of someone taking it out on a punching bag has been going on for quite some time, and whoever it was did not seem to be winding down any. It was quite distracting, but then, there was a reason that Hettie had had the punching bag placed above her office.

She sighed, put down her pencil, and made her way upstairs. She cast a glance at the bullpen on her way, but the only one there - Hansen - was the one least likely to be making the noise, anyway. Hettie doubted that it was Deeks, either, and Callen was more likely to invent an excuse to come talk to her. Sam or Kensi, then.

Indeed, that was Sam she saw at the far end of the walkaway. She walked over, unhurried, her arms crossed on her chest. At a distance of five feet she paused and waited but, when Sam did not seem inclined to acknowledge her presence in any way other than scowling harder, she took two more steps forward.

Finally, he stopped, turning the scowl from the punching bag to her. “What?” he asked, in a tone he usually didn’t use on her.

“Nothing,” she replied, in a tone that wasn’t nearly as offhand as it might seem, waving her hand a little without uncrossing her arms. “I understand that we have no active cases and that you have finished all your paperwork, including the expense reports for the last month.”

“So you’re here to lecture me on being done with my paperwork?” The anger diminished a little, replaced by confusion. That was never a good sign, with Sam.

She raised her eyebrows. “Am I?”

Sam scowled and turned back to the punching bag, sparing a momentary glare towards the bullpen below.

Well. That was the opposite of unexpected.

“I would expect that an agent of your caliber would have figured out by now less testosterone-inspired methods of working through your frustrations.”

Another hard hit to the bag before he was glaring at her again. “Perhaps you’d prefer if I just smiled and pretended to play nice, then?”

Ah. So that’s what it was about. This implied that something had been left out of the reports the absence of which was not glaringly obvious. “Some would argue that that is a mature coping strategy.”

He snorted. “Sticking your head in the sand and pretending like nothing happened isn’t a mature coping strategy.”

She uncrossed her arms, moving them behind her back, and indicated half a nod before saying, “You’re talking about your two partners.”

“You mean the two idiots I’m stuck playing referee for.”

“Well, they seem to have become less adversarial since your misadventure in Yemen,” she acknowledged, “but you think nothing has truly changed?”

“No, I think everything changed, and now they’re being stupid about it.”

 _Everything changed._ Neither that or anything to suggest it was in the reports. There was the bone. She softened her voice a little. “Everything changed, how?”

He scowled for a moment longer, but his expression slowly changed into something more contemplative. “Something happened in that cave.”

“Yes,” she said, pulling the syllable a little. “While I do believe that Abdul was well when they left him there, I do think that I am not alone in estimating that he had not been well _before._ ” Hansen’s actions at the village testified to no little degree of anger; Hettie had had dealings with the clans before she’d brought Hansen to OSP (unaware, at the time, of the connection), and she knew enough both of what passed for criminal law among ninjas and of post-water ninja politics to understand what Tori might’ve felt justified in, in her anger. “But that's not what you implied, is it.”

“Something between G and Tori.” He paused, then shook his head slightly. “I don’t even know.”

Yes, that much was evident. “Mr. Callen has always been reluctant to trust new team members, or, indeed, accept new people overall.” That, at least, got a faint smile out of Sam. Good. “One would think that Tori’s actions in that village would help him accept Ms. Hansen; and yet, he’s no less distant, for all that he is - mercifully - less actively hostile.” She had expected Callen to take badly to the new agent, though she had failed to anticipate how long he would cling to the antagonism. “She, however, seems to be even more distant in the wake of these events.” She paused, re-evaluating Sam’s words. “What _were_ they like, with each other, shortly after?”

She could see him searching for the right word. “Close,” he said eventually, but he didn’t seem sufficiently satisfied with the word. A beat later, he added: “Partner-close.”

His voice softened on that word, suggesting a wealth of observations she was apparently not to be told of as well as explanation for the intensity of Sam’s current frustration. Callen and Tori were being practically best friends, relative to the quality of their interaction before Yemen; if, however, they had gone well beyond that and then retreated to their present distance... yes, that would upset Sam this much.

What _had_ happened? Hettie could easily perceive her favorite agent’s putative motivation in distancing himself this stubbornly, irrational as that motivation was. She did not have that understanding of her newest and youngest, though: the woman had been invested in gaining Callen’s approval since the beginning, and there was no clear reason why she would distance herself thus once that approval was gained.

Knowing what she did about Hansen’s formative years, though, Hettie could make an educated estimate of the _kind_ of the problem, if not its precise shape. At least now she had some new intel to mull over, and a reasonable basis over which to reassure Sam.

“I do believe they’ll come back around,” she told Sam with confidence. “Neither of them takes easily to closeness. Perhaps it was too much, too fast, for either of them to accept the new state of things just like that. The change did happen, though, and they will learn to incorporate it. Eventually.”

He levelled one of his many variants of a long-suffering look at her. “And what is _that_ is going to take?”

“Well,” she said, transferring an irritated gaze between him and the punching bag, “you’re splendidly positioned to bash their heads together.”

 

* * *

 

“No,” G said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

Tori, standing across the table from him, glared. Deeks was rather happy he was not the one on the receiving end of that particular scorching expression.

“You’re not making sense,” she informed him.

“I said, no.”

Deeks glanced sideways at Kensi. G was as stubborn as stubborn as your average mule, but Deeks couldn’t remember that he’d ever went Because I Said So before. Kensi, though, was glancing between G - who was looking stubborn on his own scale, jaw set and all - and Sam, who looked like he wanted to shoot someone.

Personally, Deeks occasionally wondered if G and Tori didn’t need to get into the same bed. Again. Metaphorically. Or not.

“The job includes running on rooftops and hanging upside down from ropes,” she snapped.

“Hey!” Kensi demanded. “If you’re - ”

“No disrespect,” Tori continued smoothly, nodding at Kensi with an expression _seriously_ less annoyed than the scathing one she levelled at G a split-second after. “Which part of ‘resident ninja’ did you manage to forget?”

Deeks stared. Tori had a mouth on her, sure, but she was ridiculously careful with authority. This was new.

Or not, to judge by Sam’s face.

“I don’t care,” G snapped right back. There was something else under the anger, something restless, but Deeks couldn’t name it yet. “Kensi is doing this mission, not you.”

“Give me one good reason,” Tori demanded.

G opened his mouth to reply, but he never did. Not in words. His whole posture shifted as he snapped his mouth back shut, going from anger to defensiveness and losing twenty or thirty years in the process. The anger ebbed away from his expression, too, as quickly as rainfall in a desert. The emotions revealed under it made Deeks blink, and tense instinctively. It was haunted, just as intense, and eerily vulnerable.

G couldn’t stand the thought of Tori on this mission. Reason had nothing to do with it. And Deeks had been a cop long enough to know that nobody looked _that_ haunted unless there was at least one skeleton in their closet.

Well. That explained a lot.

He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought, though, because Tori’s reaction was equally startling. Her anger vanished even more quickly than G’s. Deeks remembered her at the boathouse the day they found out she was a ninja, wide-eyes and tense; that day had nothing on her present wide-eyed expression, part deer-in-headlights and part crushing guilt.

Birds of a feather, seriously. It was like watching one puppy kick another. Deeks spared a moment of gratitude over not having to deal with those two, and sympathy for Sam, who did.

Seconds later they were both _still_ staring at each other, seemingly not any more likely to finding words any time soon. It was a good thing, then, that Kensi shook her head, silently mouthed something that could be a swear, turned to where Eric and Nell were standing to the side, and asked, a little more sharply than was necessary: “So, details?”

 

* * *

 

They’d had easier cases. Tori’s I-told-you-so after King killed Asher were epic. They were also consistently closely followed by equally guilty wincing, which consistently made G look away, clam up and find something to snap at; which, in turn, made Sam’s desire to shoot them both spike each time as well.

Sam tried to comfort himself with the thought that it was also far from the _worst_ they ever had, but then Kensi’s comm went to static. Deeks - understandably - freaked; G swore; rather than seem either furious or scared, though, Tori turned to G and said: “I can - ”

 _She could be there in seconds,_ Sam remembered with a wave of relief -

\- and then the entire compound blew up.

Sam reached out and grabbed Deeks by the shoulder. The black streak sped past them, disappearing into the horizon, towards the cloud of smoke.

“Guys,” Eric said warningly over the comm.

“We know, Eric,” G said. “Tori’s gone to take a look.”

 _Tori,_ and not _Hansen._ Sam hasn’t heard G use the girl’s first name since Yemen.

“What...?” Deeks asked, a little stupidly.

“Ninja super-speed,” Sam reminded him. “Tori’ll be there and back before we know it.”

It wasn’t long before the black streak sped back, turning into Tori on the ground.

“Kensi’s fine,” were the first words she said.

Sam tightened his grip on Deeks’ shoulder before the kid collapsed.

“King threw both of them in the water,” Tori continued, “offed everyone else. She’s not happy with him, but she’s fine.” Then she nodded at G. “Sorry for not asking. I was going to, but...” she shrugged.

“It’s fine,” G said. His gaze flitted to Sam for all of a split-second, and then his shoulders straightened and relaxed. “All right. Back to business.”


	4. Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."  
>   - Isac Dinesen

Sam had parked the car on one of the upper levels of the parking garage, as far from the terminal as possible. It made getting to the terminal a bitch, but it afforded the team a few minutes of privacy to talk before heading inside. They wouldn’t have another chance to plan before they were in-country.

“Fourth level, back corner,” Sam said into his cell phone before hanging up. “Tori’s on her way,” he said, turning to the rest of them. He was looking at Callen, though; Callen was looking somewhere off in the distance.

None of them even had a chance to say anything before Tori was there, making Kensi curse under her breath at the younger woman’s arrival.

“Here,” Tori said, grasping Kensi’s fingers with her own and transferring what appeared to be a cord bracelet from her wrist to Kensi’s. “I only found one of Blake’s, hope navy’s okay.”

It took Kensi a moment to realize that it wasn’t just a pretty piece of jewelry. The cord was sturdy, and doubled up enough that if she shook it out, it would probably be long enough to go around her neck.

 _Oh_.

“Thanks,” she replied, wondering if she should be more surprised by the fact that anyone on this team had a garrote that doubled as a bracelet.

Tori gave her a quick smile. She slung the black backpack over her one shoulder and dug through, bringing out several flat things with straps hanging off them that turned out to be sheathed knives. “We got enough to go around,” she said. “They’ll get through security, no problem.”

Deeks examined his closely, with his usual kid-at-Christmas expression. “Not that I’m not grateful for the arsenal or anything, but why do you have all this stuff, again?”

“Ninja, remember? It’s not all special effects.”

“You gonna take any of these, G?” Sam prompted his partner. Kensi exchanged a look with Deeks. Ever since they’d realized Hettie had gone AWOL, Callen had been acting strange even on his usual scale. Kensi would almost go so far as to call it _brooding_.

He turned to look at what Tori was offering, taking a moment before selecting one of the knives. “Thanks,” he said to her, making the knife disappear into his own bag.

Tori raised her eyebrows at him. “There’re at least four for each of us,” she said.

“I won’t be using knives,” Callen replied. There was that hard, dangerous edge to his voice again, and Kensi saw Sam frowning.

“Knives don’t need crappy black market ammo,” Tori said, as if they were talking the weather. “Tell me if you change your mind.”

“Let’s go,” was Callen’s only response, heading across the parking garage, expecting them all to fall in line and follow.

 

* * *

 

G wandered down to the sand while the rest of them talked tac plan. Sam let him, but kept an eye on him anyway. Just because he hasn’t identified any threats _yet_ didn’t mean that there weren’t any. Tori must have done the same and just hid it better, because she reacted a fraction of a second before he did when G went down. She stayed two steps back, though, covering both of them while Sam talked G back to his feet.

G was fine, physically, but something was definitely wrong. _Something_ happened, even if Sam didn’t yet know what it was. It was several minutes before G spoke, and even then, what he said didn’t make much sense.

“It’s the Black Sea.”

“That’s right,” Sam said.

“I always thought it was the Pacific Ocean,” G continued, still sounding more out of it than not. “California.”

On G’s other side, Tori’s expression shuttered off and became a blank mask. Something G had said got under her skin, but Sam wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was just the fact that G was quickly falling apart in front of them, but he could only deal with one partner having a breakdown at a time. He’d try and talk to her later, if they got the chance. He just hoped this wouldn’t blow up in their faces, too.

“You gonna be all right?” Sam asked, trying to sound peeved and not quite succeeding. “Because if you’re going to flip out when you’re supposed to be watching my back, I need to know.”

“Yeah,” G said, sounding a bit more like himself, if still at his most distant. “I’m fine.”

“We need to get out of here,” Tori said quietly.

“There’s a light industrial area just north of here,” G said. “Warehouses, auto shops.”

Kensi and Deeks exchanged a look. “We’ll go check it out.”

 

* * *

 

“They shot her.”

Sam was still working through the implications - personal and wide-angle - and most of his attention was focused on G, anyway. That was the only reason he could think of that he hadn’t even noticed as Tori walked over to the old cars maybe ten feet behind them.

A loud crash made him startle and turn around. Tori had kicked the front door of one of the cars, putting a remarkable dent in the metal. As Sam watched, Tori proceeded to wreck the car with kicks and elbow jabs, putting holes in the metal and tearing one of the doors off. He’d seen her drop five people with a thought just the day before, and he well remembered the feeling of his lungs being pulled back into wholeness, but this was something else.

She’d reduced the car to scrap metal and broken glass - mending her own skin several times in the process - before she turned around. She opened her mouth to say something, shook her head, tried again and then just shook her head again.

“Feel better?” Sam asked wryly. The destruction was impressive, and he wished he could have worked out some of his tension the same way. But hopefully it would be enough for Tori to calm down so they could work together in keeping G in one piece.

“No,” she said. She took a long, shaky exhale and added: “Really, really not.”

Sam bit back a nasty remark. It wouldn’t do any good to get angry at Tori right now. He would just deal with things and hope Kensi and Deeks would at least keep their heads screwed on straight. “One of you needs to just start talking, because I can’t deal with both of you like this right now,” he said. The words were testier than he’d intended, but hopefully not outright antagonistic. He knew Tori’s track record with that.

It was a moment before Tori swallowed and said, “Blake and Hunter -” She bent over, resting her forearms against her thighs. “When Blake was eight and Hunter nearly eleven,” she continued in a forcibly calm voice, then paused and started again. “Their parents. Hunter found what was left of them. In their bedroom.” She straightened up, slowly, carefully, arms crossed protectively on her chest. “This is how it happened,” she said, looking straight at G. “This is why it went wrong. Lothor did that so he’d know where the buttons were, when he came for real.” Another pause, and then: “They’re going to be expecting us. They’re going to be expecting _you._ Vengeance makes people predictable, easy.”

“They have no reason to suspect we’re coming,” G replied.

“I can think of at least three different ways they might,” she retorted.

G was maybe about to say something, but the sound of the door drew their attention.

Kensi eyed all of them warily. “Am I interrupting?”

 _Finally_ , Sam wanted to say, but he could read her body language well enough to know that she’d found something, and it probably wasn’t good. “What’ve you got?”

At the same time, Tori demanded: “Where’s Deeks?”

Kensi looked between the two of them, then answered Tori’s question first. “Still at the beach. Eating ice cream.” She went over and picked up the iPad, ejecting the memory card from the camera and sliding it into the card reader, pulling up the pictures to show the others.

“Is that who I think it is?” Sam had to ask.

“Lauren Hunter,” Kensi confirmed.

“Fucking Hunter,” Tori spat, and added: “Still think I’m fucking overreacting?”

“Right. Time to re-strategize,” Sam declared.

 

* * *

 

They were still arguing when suddenly Tori swore and streaked out. Seconds later the door banged as she streaked back in but she was gone before they could so much as see her, leaving behind two unconscious men. Seconds after that she was back again, dropping the ankle of a third unconscious man from her one hand and holding firmly to a slightly green Deeks with the other.

“Nobody’s fucking staying on their fucking own, is that fucking clear?” she spat.

“Could you give me a little warning next time you’re going to do something like that?” Deeks asked.

Tori glared at him, but said nothing.

“What just happened?” Kensi asked. Sam was crouching next to one of the bodies, two fingers on his neck.

“He’s alive.”

“Duh,” Tori said. “They all are.”

G stalked over to one of the men and hauled him off the floor, depositing him in a chair. “Wake him up,” G ordered Tori. “I want answers.”

Tori’s voice shifted into a tone Kensi wasn’t familiar with. “So I’ll throw in some extra motivation.”

A second later, the men woke up with a gasp.

“Don’t try,” Tori said, stalking into his field of vision. “You can’t scream. You can’t move, either.” She dragged herself a chair and sat on it backwards. “That’s your kidneys bleeding internally. Don’t count on dying. Now, I _can_ make this stop, but you’re going to be a good boy and cooperate, okay? Or it’ll be so much worse.”

Tori’s each with this surprised Kensi a little. Interrogation was one thing; this was something else entirely. But clearly Tori recognized that sometimes accepted interrogation techniques weren’t always enough to get the information they wanted. The team tried to avoid using the harsher methods when they could, but this was a situation where they would all turn a blind eye on a little bit of torture.

And really, this bastard deserved it.

 

* * *

 

There was that strange sense of disorientation where it felt like everything was moving in slow motion and super speed all at once. Sam couldn’t get across the room fast enough as Hettie toppled sideways, collapsing to the floor. G was next to her before Sam could get there, putting pressure on the stomach wound.

“Oh, God, Hettie, no,” G said, sounding for all the world like a young boy instead of a grown man, his voice cracking just a little. Sam could see Lauren’s horrified look from the corner of his eye, but his attention was focused more on his partner and their boss. G looked up at him with horror filled eyes, then his gaze darted around the room, before he shouted in desperation. “Tori!”

Steps bounded down the hall. Second later, Tori burst through the open door. Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the scene; she, too, seemed to lose about ten years in a heartbeat. “Do you trust her?” she demanded of G. “And you’d fucking better _think_ first.”

Tori could only mean Lauren by that _her_. He watched as G’s gaze flicked from Lauren, down to Hettie, then back to Tori, before answering. “Yes.”

Tori crossed the room in two long strides and knelt by Hettie. “Take that hand off, I need to remove the bullet.” Sam watched at the bullet seemed to expel itself from Hettie’s abdomen, and then Tori placed a glowing hand over Hettie’s stomach, seemingly smoothing over the injured flesh. It was only a moment before Tori removed her hand.

“What...?” Hettie asked weakly.

Sam wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t for Tori’s face to twist in anger and then become a taut mask. “She’ll be fine,” she told no one in particular as she pushed herself up to her feet. “I’ll be outside.”

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t sure how long it’d been before she could sense Sam coming up behind her. It could’ve been minutes or it could’ve been hours; she wasn’t paying attention. Probably the former, though: her water bottle was still mostly full, and instincts still worked when everything else crashed.

Sam said nothing as he came around and sat down next to her. Close, so close. Another day and she would’ve laid her head on his shoulder. This day, it wasn’t worth the fight to hold the flinch back.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Another wave washed up and she unwrapped one of her arms from her knees so she could dip her fingers in the water. It took a while to sort through the disaster zone in her head. “Want to, yeah. Can, dunno.”

“You did good today,” he said, after another moment of silence.

It startled a laugh out of her. Or something that could’ve been a laugh, but sounded all wrong. “Which part?” she asked. There was a _fucking_ in there in her head, but it stayed in there. “Yeah, okay, fucking great, nobody died today we didn’t mean to die, go us, but I should’ve fucking _known_ and -” she swallowed that back down, the image of Hettie’s face, attention turned inwards in the way of the dying. She still felt guilty over Sensei’s - over Cam’s father’s - death, these years later. It took a while to force down the bitter taste at the back of her throat. “Or the part in the auto shop? Dishing that shit back has got to be good, right?” She tried to reign her breath back in, but it was a losing battle.

“You got us the information we needed from Dracul,” he said.

She closed her eyes and let her head drop to her knees. “Yeah,” she said, trying to speak clearly enough to be heard through the distortion and the waves. “Really not my first time.” She grasped at words, trying to find a way to say it that would make sense. At least it was Sam. Of all her current team, he’d at least been there. Much more softly, she asked, “If you had to bury someone alive?”

He tensed rather than flinched, and took a moment to consider his reply. “It was for the right reasons.”

She shut her eyes tightly, but the tears bled through anyway. Funny how she breathed a little better, despite everything. It was difficult to sort what she knew from what she thought she knew, what she’d learned from the instincts that came with the power and would never quite fade away. She didn’t mean to say it, but the words slipped anyway. “Sometimes he reminds me of Hunter so fucking much.”

“How so?”

She shook her head a little as she straightened her back, and finally she made herself look at him. The line of his sight passed right by her, enough to be attentive but not so much as to be intrusive. There were words in her head, and broken images, and maybe Sam would understand - Sam would, if anyone - but she couldn’t be sure about the rest of them, and she couldn’t take that sort of a fight. This could tear her up too, though. Was already tearing her up bad, if she was sitting by the water fighting to string words together and flinching back from someone she was supposed to trust. Someone she did trust, really.

“Like today,” she said eventually. “Like...” she fished around, trying to remember. “With the guy who broke into his house. He just trussed him up in the trunk.”

Sam snorted softly. “He’s not usually that bad. He just really doesn’t like people invading his personal space.”

 _No, it’s not like that._ But she bit back the words, curled in on herself again and looked the other way.

“You’ve probably noticed, but he doesn’t do well with emotional stuff,” Sam continued. “Hettie’s probably the closest thing he’s known to a mother figure.”

It was testimony to how tired she was that the words of her other voice burst out before she even knew she’d thought them. “I was the only person on that team with two living parents who weren’t a fucking disaster at parenting, okay? I don’t need the fucking reminder. Fuck.” It was unfair, and she knew it. “Sorry.” She made herself turn back, even if she needed to dig her nails in so deep that she nearly made herself bleed. “Shit really went wrong then. Really fucking wrong. This is how. Even if they’re all good reasons.”

“G’s got us - you, me, Kensi and Deeks. Hettie. We catch him when he stumbles, hopefully before he can fall completely. He won’t ever admit how much he needs us - _all_ of us. You’ve made sure a couple times now that it stays that way.”

 _He needs that. You make sure he has it._ The words flowed into the grooves that power had worn in her head. There were other marks cut into her as well, though. “Yeah,” she said softly, and then let her hands fall into her hands. “One of those days, though. I’ve done so much pulling back that I think I’m just going to topple over too, one of these days. And I’m not even going to know, y’know? It’s like that.”

“We’ll catch you, too,” Sam replied. “I don’t think I need to tell you that’s what Team is for.”

And finally, letting her body fall sideways, towards him, was the easy thing to do.


	5. Scar Tissue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea."  
> \- Ovid

Eating habits on this team split about even, Deeks figured. Kensi always seemed to be munching on one or the other greasy or overly-sweetened thing, and Deeks more than _suspected_ that she got her vitamins from pills which, really, wasn't the way to go. Deeks, for his part, tried to stick to foods that had had roots and not a pulse, or at the very least gills. His diet was perfectly healthy and balanced. So was Sam's, but Sam's diet was healthy and balanced in a meticulously scientific, eating-disorder-like way. Which, again, balanced with G's eating habits, which were nearly - not quite, but nearly - as horrible as Kensi's. And then there was Tori, who at first Deeks thought was human garbage disposal or maybe had undiagnosed Type I Diabetes, or something, and then it turned out that she was a ninja and had a freaky metabolism that explained it off.

Thing is, Tori ate. She ate as often as Sam did and often in the same quantities, for all that she was half of Sam's weight, though she seemed to prefer to rely on actual food rather than engineered protein shakes. Deeks had never seen her touch synthetic foods, if he thought about it.

Which was what made the present situation so weird.

"Okay, I have to ask," Deeks asked idly from where he was leaning back in his chair, considering his colleagues through half-lidded eyes, the picture of harmlessness.

"That never bodes well," said Kensi.

"What, Deeks?" Sam said a beat later, in that bitten-out overly-patient tone he reserved for him.

With everyone's attention secure, Deeks continued: "So Tori, did you actually _eat_ anything in the past week or is this just a work hours thing?"

"I eat," she shot back promptly; too promptly, and defensively too. "Do you see me losing weight? Because, let me assure you -"

"No, I don't see you losing weight," he said, "but that's because those are four Ensure bottles in your dustbin every day."

He expected a _Seriously, Deeks? You going through my trash?_ but he should've known better. She didn't even narrow her eyes at him, just gave him an annoyed look that - knowing Tori - had a whole zoo of F-words behind it.

G, however, was leaning sideways in his chair and narrowing his eyes at her. "I thought you can't stand those things."

"That's why I always have four servings in my go bag," she shot back.

She was also, Deeks noted, very carefully keeping her distance and looking G a little too straight in the eye. G could probably get her to cave, if he pushed.

"So if I got up and checked your dustbin right now," Sam said in that very misleading calm tone of his, which seemed to not mislead Tori for a _second,_ "I wouldn't find any Ensure bottles there?"

Tori was decidedly glaring and looking like a caught-out teenager. "I didn't say that, either."

"I thought you only keep the Ensure for emergencies," Sam continued. "Any emergencies in the past week I don't know about?"

"Oh, it just got worse in the past week, but it started way before that," Deeks supplied helpfully, and then said "Hey!" as his socks were suddenly very, very wet. "I swear, if you ruined my shoes -"

"They're sneakers," Tori said, sickly-sweet and still icy. "You can put them in the laundry and nothing'll happen to them."

"I'm still waiting," Sam said.

"It's no emergency," said Tori and yeah, she'd reached the territory of _petulant._ "Really, nothing's wrong, okay?" And, predictably, under the combined glares G and Sam - the latter crossing his arms, too, and Deeks would have felt sorry for her but his socks and shoes were soaking wet and also, she wasn't eating - she said: "It's just summer."

Which seemed like a non sequitur, except Kensi - of all of them - got it. "Seriously," she said, with the kind of schadenfreude she usually reserved for Deeks. "Really?"

Now Tori crossed her arms on her chest, too, and she was still looking like a sullen teen.

"What, Kensi?" G asked, a little sharply.

"It's moto season," Kensi said. "Blake hasn't been home since May, hasn't he?

 _Seriously?_ Deeks nearly asked, _You're not eating because your **husband's** not home? _ But his socks were still soaked, and he didn't want to know what Tori would do next.

Tori was still hunched in and glaring, but she confirmed: "May to September. Though there are the Action Games in August."

"Seriously?" G asked. He looked, Deeks thought, as if someone had just told him that the sky was purple with green spots.

"Really, G, I'm fine," Tori said, sounding exasperated. "I'm in no hurry to starve myself. I just sort of forget to eat other things, sometimes, and you," and suddenly she looked like a twenty-five-year-old and a federal agent again, "don't get to say anything about _that._ "

 

* * *

 

Tori made too much sense sometimes. Or at least, she did to him. G thought that Sam had to catch on to many of the same things, for the same reasons that G caught on to them, but Sam didn't ask about the cave in Yemen and G didn't ask about what Sam saw.

So when Tori said _You don't get to talk about that,_ what G heard was more than just an acknowledgement of forgetting mealtimes and an "I don't want to talk about it." Which was what he was doing at the pier at two in the morning, looking up at Tori's house boat and wondering how to do this.

He could be wrong; she could be asleep. He didn't think she was, though. That made two of them. Ten days since they returned from Romania, ten days since Vance had suspended Hettie, ten days since any of them _saw_ Hettie.

He really hoped Tori was awake.

Tori's head and torso showed over the railing. "You're lucky I fed your face and retinal scan into the alarm system, you know that?"

"You what?" he demanded. The ramp slid down, too silent. "Where do you even fit a retinal scan from this distance?"

"Do I need to remind you again that..."

"Psionic genius hacker of a best friend," he retorted. as he climbed up "Yeah, I remember. Biometric alarm system?"

"Something like that," she said.

The ramp closed up behind him. Definitely too silent, but he didn't need to ask to know that the answer to that, too, would be "Cam made it."

"Actually," he said, jamming his thumb over his back, "I was going to ask if you want to go for a stroll."

"Sure," she said after a beat. "I'm failing on sleep tonight anyway. I'll just grab something dry and some sandals."

"Were you trying to sleep in the water?" he asked, just to clarify, because she was in a wetsuit, and there was water clinging to her skin.

"Sure," she said, offhand, "that's the point of having a hot tub."

"I suppose next you'll tell me you can't drown."

"That's right," she agreed. "Be right back."

 

* * *

 

She was being ridiculous and she knew that. It was just G. They were okay, they'd been okay since Yemen, since he got it through his head that she was serious and since he'd managed to talk her down. They were okay. And maybe she didn't want to think of Romania, but G went from _not eating_ to _not sleeping_ all on his own, and he kept coming.

She didn't sleep well, on her own. It'd been like this Since, even if it had been a while since she'd had a summer this bad. There were reasons Blake and she were still living on a houseboat, but maybe this would work better, the way things were.

Maybe G wouldn't flip out that she showed up on his door unannounced, but her stomach was churning and she brought pizza anyway.

The door opened. "Do ninja powers extend to keeping pizzas on the back of a motorcycle?"

"The enhanced balance and motorics help," she said, trying to keep it light.

"You know, if NCIS isn't paying you enough, you could just ask for a raise instead of resorting to pizza delivery," he said, still standing in the doorway.

She could think up some retort, but he was just playing for time: she noticed the way he glanced up and down the street, looking for threats. There was nobody there but two cats, but telling him that would be pointless. He still preferred to find out for himself.

She shrugged.

"Come on in," he finally relented, stepping back so she could enter.

The floor was the first thing she noticed, really: hardwood stretching from room to room, no rugs or furniture to hide it. It was nice; it wasn't the same kind of wood that the academies were built from, but it was still wood, still warm, and she liked being able to see around.

She knew that look, the sideways one: he was expecting some sort of judgment.

"Homey," she said, making straight for the kitchen. "Love the hardwood."

He followed her. "Beer?" he offered, heading for the fridge.

"Sure," she said, putting the pizzas on the counter. The lack of a table was no surprise.

He pulled two bottles out, opening both before handing one to her. "Plates are in the drawer to your left."

The plates turned out to be paper, but Tori didn't even think to say a word as she pulled two out. It was like that; she got it.

"Pepperoni, mushrooms, or both?" she asked, flipping one box open.

He shrugged. "Surprise me."

The top box was the ‘both' option, so that was ‘both' for both of them. Maybe one day he'd learn to have preferences, but she doubted it. It'd been hard enough with Blake and Hunter, and they had been much, much younger.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked, one hip leaning against the counter, plate of pizza balanced in one hand with the beer in the other.

She sucked in a breath. She wouldn't be here if he hadn't made a habit of showing up, since that day Deeks called her up on the summer thing. She wouldn't be here if she didn't think - if she didn't _want_ to think that this was real, and the other thing was not.

There was the faith you had in your team because you couldn't help it, because you had to, and there was the faith you chose to have. She hadn't made a choice about G until that night, and maybe she wouldn't be making it until she said something.

"Which part of it?" She flinched at the crack in her voice. And yeah, she was playing for time, too, but it was a _yes,_ not a _no._

"How about starting with why you came tonight?" he asked.

"Same as every other night?" she said. It came out as a question. She was also failing at actually looking at him.

Shit.

The beer wasn't going to do a thing for her and it certainly wasn't going to cover anything up, but she took a long swig anyhow and then placed the bottle on the counter.

"I lived here in this house for a couple months as a kid, you know," he said. It was a lot like the Hunter-voice, casual and neutral, but it wasn't quite. And G was less likely to talk about his childhood than she about the war.

She looked up at him.

"Hettie..." There, his voice cracked, just a little. "She knew. Put the paperwork through for me."

He didn't say, _It was a good house._ He didn't say, _Good enough to go back to_ or _most weren't,_ but she could hear it between the words. Her chest constricted at it.

He also said Hettie's name. She wouldn't talk of Hettie, hadn't talked of Hettie, since the Comescu house. She walked out every time one of the others brought it up. None of them called her out on it. She had really expected him to, if no one else would.

"Cam's father," she began, and then had to take a deep breath. She didn't realize how hard it would be to say _Cam's father_ and not _Sensei._ "He was the head of the academy, Clan Chief. When Lothor attacked, it - it was just him and us who got away and," another breath, "he was hurt. Nothing serious, at the time, but - it wasn't going to get better. When," she looked down, hands tightening on her elbows. _After Hunter. After he risked Shane that way._ She forced herself to look up, almost but not quite managing to look at G. "He did something that got Cam and me pretty upset," she said, very carefully, and then she had to pause again, trying to find a way to explain. "When Lothor targeted him again, it was... bad. He got really hurt. And - I wasn't - none of us was that good, then. I don't even know if it would've mattered. Sensei made it to the end of the war, but the day after we killed Lothor, he -" She blinked away the tears. Funny how it was easier to look at G, for this part. Funny how stable her voice was, suddenly. "He told Shane to stop trying."

He crossed the kitchen so that he was standing next to her, putting one hand on her arm like he wasn't sure it was all right to do. "You were good enough, this time," he said.

She didn't mean to make that little sound but it got through anyway; it was a sound of being small and hurt and alone in the cold, and maybe she was still hurt but the rest of it wasn't true, hadn't been true in a long time, even if it was hard to remember, sometimes, when there wasn't the sound of anybody else's breath in her home.

It was hard to remember that she wasn't alone when she'd just invoked those memories. The old cold rose out of nowhere, sticking to her skin even in LA summer. G was right there, though, and he wasn't cold. She stepped into him, pressing her face against his shirt. A moment later she was warmer, and it took her another moment to realize that it was because G was holding her. Her hands clutched on his shirt almost on their own.

Okay. They were going to be okay.

 

* * *

 

Sam was a block away from his house, finishing up his morning run, when he saw someone leaning against his car, presumably waiting for him. Too short to be G, too female to be Deeks, too blonde to be Kensi. There weren't many other people who knew where he lived, and anyway, if it was someone out to grab him, they wouldn't have waited outside for him like that. That left Tori--which, if she had showed up at his house before work and her bike was nowhere in sight, something was wrong.

Not work--he carried his cell phone on his runs, and Eric or G would have called if there was a problem. Which meant it was something to do with G, otherwise she'd have cornered Sam at work or found someone else to talk to about her problems. He scowled as he pushed himself to speed up for the last 100 meters of his run. Just when he'd thought his two idiot partners were starting to figure things out...

"Hey," he said in response to her half wave of greeting. She was carrying a bag from the bakery around the corner. "Come on in. I just need five to shower."

She shrugged and followed. "Okay."

He frowned, but didn't say anything, leaving her in his living room so he could shower and change for work. Whatever was on her mind had to be pretty damn big for her to be acting like this. By the time he came back out, she was standing near the bookshelf, looking at the pictures he kept on display. "What's up?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

She shrugged again, and lifted the paper bag. "Brought breakfast-to-go," she said.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Hope you brought enough for Eric. You know how touchy he gets when you break his toys."

"He should just let Cam fix all our phones," she retorted. "But I turned it off before I came, turned it on later. Should be fine. It's just seconds in between, anyway."

He held up his hands. "You want to set Cam and Eric on each other, be my guest. Mind you, my money's on your friend, but don't tell Eric I said that."

She snorted. "Cam always wins. Unless it's Marah. Or Shane is having an idiot day."

"Sounds like G," he said, as nonchalantly as he could. He timed it so he had turned away to grab his keys, wallet, and weapon. When he turned back, she still hadn't moved, but something about her had shifted--she was looking at him intently, attention focused completely on him, with her shoulders set just so. He'd only seen her look like that less than a handful of times in the eight months she'd been working with them, and then only briefly, when she was angry or upset. But she wasn't either, at the moment.

He knew the look; had seen it in the mirror enough times, and in the expressions of his former SEAL teammates. Special Forces.

Probably an apt comparison. But what the hell had happened to put her in that sort of mood? She was still looking at him, still hadn't said anything, but she'd said the breakfast was for the road, which meant she wanted to have this talk in the car. He gave her one last assessing look, then turned to head outside. She matched his pace, side-by-side, until they reached his car, her taking the extra few steps around the front to the passenger side.

It would have been creepier when they opened their doors simultaneously, slid into the seats, and then closed the doors at the exact same time, except he'd done that sort of thing before; usually with G, or other SEALs, never with Tori. All of his mental perceptions of her were rapidly reorganizing themselves to fit with these new observations.

He turned the car on and pulled out into the street, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

"Remember when I said that the front-line teams aren't a ninja thing?"

That had been after those monsters had surprised them--Mynocks or Nighlocks or whatever they were called--and they'd gone to the boat house to regroup. "Yeah."

"The front-line teams are a last ditch kind of thing. When all other options run out or aren't going to work. Bottom line, it's about power. That's what the teams are for. Raw power. Everything else is to make that possible."

He was keeping his eyes carefully focused on the road ahead, but he was still aware of Tori next to him, scanning their surroundings like she was waiting for an attack. It made him think of riding in the front of a Humvee in the desert, M16 ready in his lap.

"That's why the teams are young," she continued. "Can't pull this shit with bodies that're too old, unless the conduit was established when you're young enough. Mid-teens to mid-twenties, usually. Age's not enough, though. Not everyone can take it. And then there's - it has to be a team."

"Team's important," Sam said, though whether it was for her sake or his own, he wasn't entirely sure at the moment.

"Gestalt," she said. "It doesn't - it has to be a team. And when - when you need people who can tap a certain sort of power, and who can take that much of it, and you need to match them up to a pattern, there's not a whole lot of choice. You get people who're inexperienced, who don't know each other, who maybe don't even like each other. And there's no warm-up, no training. No -" She paused for a moment, and continued. "The deal works, so long as you're willing to be who you need to be, the gestalt's going to push everything else through. Power, skills, whatever. You don't need to learn it because the Power just writes it into you."

He took a minute to think about what she said. Teenagers being given powers to save the world--the idea in itself was faintly ridiculous, except he'd been eighteen when he'd enlisted into the Navy. But he'd worked his way through boot camp, and training to become a SEAL had taken years of hard work and discipline. The power she was talking about seemed too easy. "A cheat."

"Yeah," she agreed, but there was something lurking under it. "With a price tag."

"They always come with price tags." At least she understood that, already. Sam forced himself to relax his grip on the steering wheel just a little as his knuckles started aching. He'd had this sort of conversation before, but usually it involved a hell of a lot more liquor and some sort of trigger.

She snorted. "See the catch?"

 _Oh_.

He risked a glance at her, reassessing her _again_. All things considered, she coped pretty damn well. He turned his focus back to the road, trying to keep his anger in check until he wouldn't get them both killed with reckless driving. "You didn't get the chance to learn how to cope with those habits and skills until after."

"They're not _habits,_ Sam." She sounded almost normal again, with her exasperation. "It's a lot less like instincts you get from training, and a hell of a lot more like fucking _breathing._ And it doesn't wear off. Sure, it's not the same thing when the channel's dry, but that just makes it harder. Nobody thinks about it when the power's live, but then - _"_ She sucked in a deep breath. "Teams explode all over the place, usually, once they can. There's not - you stay together, you don't get to be anything else. Anyone else. You're just -" She leaned forward, putting her head between her hands. "What you are to the team."

Sam focused on driving, letting her talk without interruption. Anger wouldn't do anyone any good here, and it was obvious she needed to get this out.

"There are roles, that's the team gestalt," she continued. "It doesn't work without the gestalt, everybody on a team has to slot into the template. It's not the same template for all teams, but - some things repeat. Some roles. There's always someone who reminds the team of - different teams forget different things, but there's always someone who keeps the team on track." The words _That's you_ hung in the silence. "And there's always someone who's got a knack for making the right calls fast in the field, who keeps everyone else alive. That's the team leader. But with every leader, you got - sometimes you get a leader who's a strategic genius with no people skills; sometimes you get a leader who sucks at getting from tactics to strategy; sometimes you get a leader who doesn't get the tech. But there's always something, something that the team leader needs. And there's always someone who's job it is to be that. That was me to Shane." She removed her hands from her face and straightened, moving slowly.

"It's a hell of a lot more like breathing, Sam," she said. She sounded tired, worn out. "And I don't think - I barely did this today. You ever think G needs to know, tell him. I can't do this."

"Give me time to figure all this out myself," he replied when he realized she was waiting for him to say something. He'd just pulled into the parking lot at Ops, and there was a punching bag with his name on it. "I'll let you know when I figure out if he needs to know."

"You don't need to tell me. Just promise me this, please?"

"What?"

"If you ever think G needs to know any of this, tell him. I need to know you have my back on this, Sam."

He scowled; he didn't like making promises he wasn't entirely sure he could keep, and he didn't like making promises that someone else forced him into making. But Tori was still sitting in the passenger seat, looking small and vulnerable. He swallowed down all of his anger and frustration. "Yeah. I promise."

 

* * *

 

They were both laughing when G unlocked his front door and pushed it, letting them both in.

"And what is your husband going to say, exactly?" he asked.

"That it's a very blue bear," Tori replied promptly, hefting the stuffed toy in question. "And that bears are traditionally yellow."

He knew better than to comment on Tori's ideas of animals and colours; it was one of those things she never explained. "It's also a very big bear," he called behind his shoulder.

"Exactly!" Tori called back.

G shook his head as he headed into the kitchen. That could mean any of several things he could think of, and probably a few more he couldn't. Still, single-word replies usually meant that it would be better for him to not ask for clarification. Tori elaborated just damn fine on her own, when she wanted to.

He opened the fridge to grab a beer. "You want one also?" he called out.

No answer.

He grabbed an extra beer anyway - Tori's metabolism processed beer like it was juice - and turned around to search for Tori. He could just follow the sand, really; they were both trailing it all over the place.

He found Tori in the living room. She was fast asleep, curled up on the floor with her back to the wall. It stopped him, for a moment - yes, it was an internal wall, but she didn't pick a corner or a tactical vantage point. It was just a random spot. What wasn't random was the way she hugged that stuffed bear. He'd insisted on winning something for her from the booths, and the bear was blue; Tori had a thing for blue. She was inordinately fond of the thing, but -

Abruptly, he turned around and went to get a blanket. Tori was cold all the time, in recent weeks, particularly after dark. It didn't occur to him that he was still holding the two beers until he reached for the blanket.

It took a bit of maneuvering, but eventually he managed to ferry all three items to the living room. He left the beers by the opposite wall before approaching Tori with the blanket. He hadn't seen her asleep since Yemen. She'd slept soundly, then, not twitching even when he ended up taking the television apart and putting it back together out of sheer boredom, but she'd also been exhausted at the time. He was pretty sure that startling a ninja awake would be a bad idea.

He needn't have worried. She didn't stir at all as he approached her slowly and then, very carefully, fitted the blanket around her. Then he paused, eying her critically. She didn't look sickly or sallow, the way she had in Yemen; and she didn't lose weight, despite her disinterest in food; but there were dark shadows under her eyes, which G had been ignoring - not wanting to think about what it meant, that she was awake at night nearly as often as he was - and there was something else, that in Yemen he'd dismissed as a result of her exhaustion. It wasn't that she seemed _young,_ exactly. Children didn't necessarily look this way. He'd seen this before, though. It made his skin crawl.

He retreated back to where he'd left the beers, cracked one open and settled down, still frowning at Tori.

He nearly finished the second beer - which had gone lukewarm, meanwhile - when suddenly, he became aware that something changed. Tori didn't shift, not in any way he could put his finger on, but something was wrong, as if she was no longer asleep but was trying very hard to pretend that she was - and was very, very good at staying still, keeping her breath even and slow and shallow -

 _Staying invisible._ It took him a moment to realize that he was doing the same thing.

It was a few more moments before she moved. The fingers of her one hand groped against the hardwood as if searching for a grip. Otherwise, she remained just as still. She repeated the motion several times before opening her eyes.

He could see her eyes darting around, taking in her surroundings, trying to get her bearings. He expected her to focus on him, but she didn't, not for any longer than she focused on anything else in the room.

"Tori?" He tried to keep his voice low, even, non-threatening. Whatever she was seeing, it had her scared, and he wanted to startle her even less now than he had earlier.

She moved, pushing herself away from him and towards the nearest corner, back against the wall the whole time and still clutching at the bear with one arm; her other hand never left the floor, still trying to grasp at it. There was something wrong with the way she was moving - no leverage with her shoulders, range of motion limited - like she had injured herself somehow. Or remembered being injured. Her gaze was locked on him, eyes wide.

He didn't dare risk getting any closer to her; not that distance seemed to matter all that much when she was using her ninja powers, but the less physically threatened she felt by him, the less chance there would be of an accident. He hoped.

"Do you know where you are?"

Still no verbal response. Her eyes started skittering around the room again, resting on the doors, the windows, the single chair and the lamp next to it. She didn't even seem to be aware of her left hand's continued motion.

He licked his lips and swallowed once, hoping his words would get through to her. "Yeah, I know, Sam keeps getting on me about decorating this place. I keep telling him it's my house so it's none of his business whether I get more furniture or not." He kept his voice as even as possible, even when she startled at Sam's name and fixed her gaze on him again. It was the same casual tone he used in the office when they weren't talking about cases.

"G?"

Some of the tension left his shoulders; she recognized him, at least, but her tone was still wrong and her posture hadn't changed. It was still worth the risk now to shift his weight and try to approach her. Tori liked to touch--casual arm brushes, the occasional hug that still startled G sometimes. He made sure to telegraph every move, slow and deliberate, but she still flinched, so he forced himself to move even slower, and wait longer between each movement.

Protocol for this sort of situation was to establish rapport. She was still clutching the bear from the boardwalk, which was as good a place as any to start. "You really like that bear, don't you? I still think the game was rigged."

That startled her more than his movement or mentioning Sam's name had. Interesting. He didn't know what it meant, but she looked down at the bear and then back up at him again. It was almost like she hadn't even realized she'd been holding it, death grip or not.

"Sam's going to be on our case tomorrow if he finds out we went to the boardwalk and didn't invite him. You know how he gets, pretending to be tough on the outside, but a total softie on the inside."

He thought she was calming down, but he couldn't be sure. She was still watching him, and didn't flinch as much when he shifted closer to her. There was now about three feet between them, and G was doing his best to come in from one side, so she wouldn't feel trapped into the corner, leaving an open route past him towards the front door.

"I bet Deeks will be jealous, too. He'll start complaining that Kensi never wins him giant stuffed animals at the fair," he said. It was pointless prattle, but talking about their coworkers seemed to be helping ground her. "Of course, he'd have spent the entire time complaining about how greasy all the food was. Can you imagine his reaction to that giant plate of cheese fries we had?"

Wrong thing to say. He could see it in every line of her body, and he mentally kicked himself. Tori and food was a touchy topic even on her good days.

"I still can't believe you insisted on riding that tower drop ride five times in a row," he tried instead. That seemed to be better. "Once? Sure. Maybe even twice. At least there was a nice view of the ocean for the ten seconds they left us waiting at the top."

Finally, she relaxed enough that he felt safe to move next to her, one shoulder against the wall. He still left some space between them, still wary for all that she looked more like herself again.

"You okay?" he asked.

"It's not Lothor's ship, right?"

She was trying to make the question sound like a joke, but G could hear the desperation behind the question, the need for reassurance. He had to swallow before he could find his voice. "Just my mostly empty living room." No response to that. He was running out of ideas that might help. "Is there... do you want me to call someone for you?"

She flinched again, though not out of fear. Another wrong step, and this time he wasn't even sure why. Maybe it had to do with her husband being out of town, but G couldn't be sure. He blew out a breath and threw caution to the wind, reaching out to put his right hand on her left; it was still resting on the floor, but she'd finally stopped grasping at it while he'd been talking. The moment his hand touched hers, she latched on to it, squeezing painfully tight. He kept his attention focused on their linked hands when he spoke again. "I'm not really good at this sort of thing, Tor."

"Well, I'm pretty sure we're not on Lothor's ship." That got him to look up; she had sounded almost normal, though the levity was still forced. She glanced at the bear for a split second, and then asked: "Did you win this for me?"

"You're not going to start complaining it's not yellow again, are you?" he asked.

"I'm not Dustin," she said, almost automatically. "It's not supposed to be yellow." A beat, and then: "G?"

He pushed aside his amused irritation at her sudden change of opinion regarding bear colors. "Wanna talk about it?" he offered.

"The floor," she said promptly. Her breath turned faster, harsher. "It isn't metal. The ship was always all metal - at least where I was - and the floor, it was mesh. For the blood to get through." She paused, three short breaths, before continuing. "It always smelled of blood, anyway. Just..." Another pause, and G wasn't sure if he should say something. Wasn't sure what he _could_ say. "He'd come in, and - the floor, always on the fucking floor, always -" She rolled her shoulders, like she was trying to work out a kink or loosen injury-stiff muscles, and her grip on his hand got a little tighter. "I couldn't - it was too dry, not enough water, not enough anything, and he kept bleeding me out and I was always bound and scar tissue, they kept patching up what he could break again, and there's nothing else, it's the same moment again and again, it's better than to think how long it's been but the scar tissue builds and -"

She paused again to breathe, her words coming out in one long ramble. Before she could continue, G slid himself the rest of the way next to her, holding his left arm open in an invitation for a hug. She collapsed against his chest more than anything, the bear pinned between them, and he wrapped his arm around her as best he could.

"Shh. It's okay now. You're safe."


	6. Newton's Third Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.  
> \- Letty Cottin Pogrebin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Newton's third law of motion: For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Other than throwing a few barbs in his direction about rabbit food, the others never paid Deeks much attention when he was in the communal coffee area making salad. That’s why it was always an excellent pretense to watch the others and try to figure out what the hell was going on with them.

This time.

It was never simple, with this group. He could usually tell what was wrong with his own partner, but Kensi wasn’t the one off-kilter. The Animaniacs were being insane. Again. Or still, Deeks wasn’t sure. First Tori pitched a break-up with food over what appeared to be an intense dislike of being home alone; then Sam spent three workdays demolishing punching bags - actually _demolishing_ , which Deeks hadn’t thought possible; and then, just when Sam calmed down and even Tori started sort of eating again - even if it was just ice cream - then G went off. Deeks hadn’t seen G go at the punching bag voluntarily even once, in the two years he’s been with OSP; yet over the past few days, G had taken to visiting the punching bag.

Things seemed more-or-less normal at the moment but, judging by the way Sam had been eying G, he had no idea what was triggering the outbursts of quiet, efficient fury, either. That implied that Tori had to know - anything that pissed G off this much had to be about these two or the specter of his family - but if the girl’s confused face was fake, Deeks couldn’t tell.

And the thing was, the team was strong, and those three were too damn stubborn to give up on one another, no matter what was wrong. Hettie would’ve known that, but Hettie was still on suspension, and Lauren Hunter didn’t know them half as well. The looks she’d been giving them were bad news.

Speaking of weird, the Wicked Witch hadn’t glared at them once since morning. She hadn’t so much as glanced at them when she came in, sweeping past the floor on the way to Hettie’s desk, and not since. Actually, if Deeks thought about it -

“You know,” he said through a mouthful of lettuce, “I think she’s spooked. She’s acting like something spooked her. Which, actually, doesn’t surprise me m...” The rest of what he was about to say died on his lips as Sam turned around to direct a particularly nasty glare at him. Deeks swallowed the rest of the lettuce down. “What?” he said defensively. “She does.”

“Maybe next time you should wear a mask so you don’t scare off your girlfriends, Deeks,” Kensi replied.

“Thank you, oh voice of experience,” Deeks aimed towards his partner. He waited a beat, ignoring Kensi’s glare, before gesturing towards Hettie’s desk. “She Who Must Not Be Named.”

He was met by three blank stares and Kensi’s frown. For being some of the best investigators in NCIS, they could be incredibly dense. “You know, you’re very lucky someone got her to back off our case before she could decide to fire us all because _some of us_ are too much trouble.” G and Sam were still staring at him as if he grew a second head, but Tori’s expression shifted and presently looked as if she was plotting to kill someone and trying very hard to conceal that. Deeks decided to risk his life on the hope that he probably wasn’t the intended target. “That rings a bell, Aquagirl?”

“Tori?” G prompted when Tori seemed to be considering her thoughts a moment too long.

_That_ got Tori to move. “I’m fucking going to fucking kill him,” she muttered as she pulled out her cell phone - the non-OSP one. “Fucking kill - Hunter?” she said abruptly into the phone. “Did you or did you not do anything that may be described as ‘having a chat’ with my temporary boss?” The briefest pause, and then: “Fuck _off,_ Hunter, stay the fuck away from my life.” Pause, and “I don’t fucking _care,_ Hunter. Stay the fuck away from my life, I’m not fucking kidding, you fucking know I’m not.” Pause, “Fuck you,” and then Tori hung up and punched in something else from speed dial. “Keep a leash on your husband,” she said into the speaker, quickly followed by “Was a controlling, territorial shit, as per fucking usual. Don’t even, Shane, it’s your fucking job to deal with him, next time he shows up in my city he’s going to fucking be my fucking _sister_ in law.” Beat. “You do that,” closely followed by, “Probably not. Yeah. You too.” She dropped the phone on her desk disgustedly.

Deeks winced while Tori was on the phone with Shane; threatening a guy’s manhood like that was just _cruel_ , even by Tori’s usual standards.

“Why would Hunter want to talk to La--her anyway?” Kensi asked.

“Because he’s an overprotective idiot and I’m married to his _little_ brother,” Tori muttered, burying her face in her hands and sounding more miserable than angry. “And I might have said something about _her_ not knowing what to make of us. And nobody in my family can keep their fucking mouth shut.”

“Well, at least now we’ll be able to get some work done,” G said. He was using that cheerful tone that they all knew was utter bullshit.

Tori tilted her head so as to look at him with one eye over her hand. “If you start siding with Hunter, I’m seeking asylum at Sam’s.”

“As long as you don’t take the toaster apart in the middle of the night,” Sam replied.

“One time,” G said, and suddenly it was like the last week had never happened. Deeks’ relief at that was startling; it felt as if it’s been more than a week. “And I put it back together again.”

“I don’t see what the problem with toasters is,” Tori said, “so long as he didn’t put it back together so that it grew to a giant size and tried toasting the neighbours.”

“And now _The Brave Little Toaster_ will never be the same for me,” Deeks said, dropping into his chair with a dramatic sigh.

“Besides,” G said, a little too casually. “Tori doesn’t have a toaster. Just a mutant microwave.”

“That is _not_ a mutant microwave. You never even met a mutant.”

“Seriously?” Deeks asked. The answer to that was probably ‘yes’, but he still found himself asking that every time. “What does a not-a-mutant microwave do, anyway?”

Tori lifted her head to glare at him, and Deeks started fearing for his socks. Again.

“Oh, fuck you, Deeks,” Tori said, but that was a normal Tori _fuck you,_ which meant pretty much the same thing as _oh hey._

Which was why he allowed himself to say, “Is that a promise?”

The empty burger wrapper that bounced off his head from Kensi’s direction was entirely worth it.

 

* * *

 

Kensi had to admit that maybe she didn’t hate Tori as much as she had, in the very beginning. Especially not after a day like today, with all-access passes to the Action Games, the ultimate extreme sports event of the year. The cherry on top was getting to meet Tori’s self-proclaimed family, something that even Sam and G hadn’t managed to pull off yet.

If that was the cherry, then the after-party at Tori’s boathouse would have to be the rainbow sprinkles. Emphasis on rainbow--Shane, who she’d met before, was wearing red, while his husband Hunter was wearing a darker shade of red; Dustin was in his usual yellow, with Marah in a pale orange designer floral print; Tori and Blake were both in shades of blue; and Cam was in green.

They were loud, and prone to lots of hugs and casual contact, but Kensi had spent enough weekends with Tori, Blake, Dustin, and Marah to know that was normal. Cam seemed to be the only exception to that rule, but even he wasn’t immune to Marah.

Watching them interact as they boarded the boat was like watching a flock of birds. They moved through and around each other with ease, and it almost seemed choreographed, except there was no way something like this could be rehearsed. She had never particularly considered herself to be clumsy, but even with the warm welcome they had all given her, she still felt like she kept missing beats to nonexistent music.

Something to think about later. Right now, there were more pressing matters. “So. Where’s this alien microwave I keep hearing about?”

The glare Cam turned on Tori was not unlike the one Sam would turn on either of his partners when they were being more suicidally insane than the usual.

Tori raised her arms to the sides. “There is no alien microwave!”

“I should hope not.”

“Cam, there is no alien anything anywhere on this boat, I swear.”

“Isn’t the Synthetron alien?” Dustin asked.

“No, it’s not,” Cam retorted.

“But we got it from the Karovans.”

That earned Dustin yet another scathing Cam stare.

“What’s a Synthetron and who are the Karovans?” Kensi asked. She was too curious not to, and Deeks was sure to grill her on Monday about everything she’d learned over the weekend. She wanted plenty of things to be able to not tell him about.

“A Synthetron is _not_ a microwave,” Tori said. Kensi had heard her using that tone for most of the day, directed at Shane and Dustin. Kensi used it with Deeks a lot when he was acting exceptionally immature.

“But it looks enough like a microwave that G would try taking it apart in the middle of the night to some mysterious ends?”

Cam finally quit glaring at Dustin, turning instead to look at Tori with a slight edge of panic. “He did not.”

“I think he wanted hot chocolate,” Tori said, apologetically. “Actually got it, too.”

Kensi snorted. Only G would consider disassembling a microwave to be a logical step in making hot chocolate.

“And that would be proof that my design improves on the Karovan model.” Cam was back to his standard irritable tone of voice, the one that made him sound like he was despairing of being surrounded by idiots all day. She’d been confused by that, at first, but after a couple of hours, she’d figured out he just liked to be grouchy the same way Sam sometimes did.

“Okay, someone introduce Kensi to the Synthetron,” Tori said. She glanced around. “All aboard?”

“No one kidnapped by aliens yet,” Shane said. Kensi hadn’t even seen him come onto the deck where they’d been standing, but no one else seemed surprised by his sudden appearance. Blake and Hunter were just behind him, perfectly in unison as they came to a stop.

“To my never ending amazement,” Cam remarked dryly. That seemed to be the typical banter involved when checking that everyone was accounted for. Kensi had quickly learned to go with it.

“All right, then,” Tori said. She pulled out her cell phone and punched something in, then turned to lean against Blake, who had stepped away from his brother; Hunter, meanwhile had shifted closer to Shane, though Shane hadn’t acknowledged his presence. “Let’s get this party started.”

No one had gone inside, but the boat’s engine turned on and it started pulling away from the pier. Yet another show of the fancy technology that had to have come from Cam’s company. Kensi was once again impressed. This was sure to be an awesome night.

 

* * *

 

Autumn brought with it several things. Of these, the important ones were Hettie’s return, and the end of moto season, which meant Tori’s husband’s return. As much as Sam yearned for some stability, after the several _interesting_ months they’d had since Romania, for a while there it didn’t look as if the return of Blake and Hettie would help at all.

G had damn near shut down, the first week of return to normal. Hettie and he were still not quite on speaking terms, and Tori suddenly had someone waiting for her at home, again. Still, Tori seemed to have made a point of not vanishing on G. Granted, G and Tori had gone back to their Best Professional so fast that one could wonder if the summer had happened at all. And just because Sam was now used to that see-saw dynamic did not mean that he found it any less irritating.

Tori was now on the list of people G more-or-less expected to not die or otherwise abandon him. He needed her, as much as he had ever needed anyone. It didn’t surprise Sam much that G alternated between closeness and pretending to not care at all. He would have preferred to feel grateful that Tori was aware of how skittish G could be about those things, but the memory of their conversation back in June haunted him. Tori had as good as told Sam that whatever supernatural forces had shaped her life had left her with the instinct to comply with whatever her team leader needed from her. It was difficult to be relieved at Tori’s authentic care with G when he didn’t know how much volition Tori had in that.

_If you think he needs to know,_ Tori had said, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to put this burden on G. So long as both of them seemed genuinely happier this way, Sam wouldn’t be the one to upset this delicate balance.

Tori’s supernatural - or near-supernatural - sensitivity was probably how she managed to appear perfectly at ease with Hettie whenever G could see. She wasn’t; G had re-accepted Hettie after that first tense week, and the rest of the team more-or-less followed. Sam wasn’t quite sure how much he would trust Hettie with G again, though, and Tori obviously trusted her none at all. The narrowed looks and slightly more fluid gait spoke volumes.

And yet another thing that had officially changed over the summer was the dissipation of the tension between Kensi and Tori. Mostly, Sam thought wryly, due to strategic bribery on Tori’s part.

“Catch!” The girl called out, tossing Kensi an envelope as the other woman arrived that morning.

Kensi seemed surprised as she caught the envelope and dropped her bag at her desk. “Thanks,” she said, and then she tore it open and saw what was inside. “Oh my god, where did you get these?”

“You are into That Hot Trio, right?” Tori said, a little smugly.

“What hot trio?” G asked, a slight edge to his voice.

“That Hot Trio,” Deeks said, like it was obvious. “Wait, do you think these are tickets to an orgy or something?”

Some days, Sam really wanted to kill his team. “Okay, enough with the Abbott and Costello routine,” he snapped. “And someone please tell me these are not tickets to an orgy.”

Kensi and Tori both burst out laughing.

“That Hot Trio is the name of a band, which Kensi digs,” Deeks said, taking pity on Sam - and on G, who froze at the first mention of the word ‘orgy’. “And, surprise surprise, Tori apparently knows someone in the band.”

“All of them, technically,” Tori said. “But V’s the one I asked for the backstage pass.” She glanced at G. “She’s Maddie’s sister.”

“The girl who turns into water?” G demanded.

“Wait, what?” Deeks said.

Sam sighed mentally. Just another day at the office.

 

* * *

 

There was nothing new or, indeed, unusual, about Kensi showing up for work the morning after a party-holiday weekend late and donning dark shades. What _was_ new and rather alarming was Kensi storming in right on time and perfectly done up, not looking the least bit as if she'd been partying hard all weekend.

And just to make it even more alarming, Kensi walked right past her own desk and planted both hands on Tori's, leaning down and forward to stare the younger agent in the face.

Sam had had a bad feeling about this since Friday. Tori had reacted all weird when Kensi mentioned the name of the DJ who would be playing at the rave her friend - Tori’s friend from that punk-rock band - had invited her to. Tori had insisted that there was nothing dangerous going on, but she’d still reacted weird and Sam still did not like this.

"Tree house?" Kensi demanded. " _Tree house?_ How about a little warning, next time? She showed up with a broom!"

Whatever he expected Tori to do, it wasn't to relax back in her chair and laugh as if this was the funniest thing she'd heard all year. Actually, he couldn't remember if he'd ever heard Tori genuinely laugh. Next to Tori, G looked perplexed as well.

"Oh, you laugh," Kensi said, pulling back. "That's a tree house like Fire Heart is a gecko!"

Tori just laughed harder.

"Good morning, Kensi," Deeks said. "How was the party?"

Kensi pivoted to face him. Her eyes were a little too wide for Sam's taste.

"Party was great," she said. "It's just that nobody told me there'd be a fucking _dragon."_ She pivoted on the last word to glare at Tori again.

"Did your friend put anything in Kensi's drink, Tori?" Sam asked.

"Sam!" Kensi protested.

"Dragon?" G asked, pointedly.

Tori, meanwhile, got her laughter under control. "Dragon's real, guys."

"And its name is Fire Heart," Deeks repeated.

"He," Kensi said. "Fire Heart is a 'he'."

"Right," G said.

That got him a Kensi glare.

"Wait," Deeks said. "If the 'tree house' is a tree house like a dragon is a gecko, what is it?"

"It's a skyscraper of a tree."

Sam looked past her, raising his eyebrows at Tori.

Tori shook her head. "No drugs."

"So, let me get this straight," G said. "The 'forest rave' was at a tree the size of a skyscraper – "

"No, it was in the actual forest, Rootcore is just where V parked her broom – "

"It's where she what?" Sam demanded.

"Your new best friend is a witch," Deeks half-stated, half-asked.

" _Witch?_ " Sam repeated.

"Imagine my shock when V showed up on my doorstep on Saturday with a broom!" Kensi threw her hands up.

"Why did you fly on a broom if there's a dragon?" Deeks asked.

"Because a dragon is way more conspicuous on a city street, duh."

"Excuse me," Hettie said. She'd come up to the partition while they were arguing. "What is all this racket about brooms and dragons?"

"Kensi's new best friend is a witch and she invited Kensi to a forest rave with elves on Yule," Deeks said.

Hettie raised her eyebrows. "Is that so, Ms. Blye?"

"Yes, Hettie," Kensi said carefully. "And someone," she grit out, glaring at Tori, "neglected to _warn me._ "

Tori's lips were twitching, hard.

"I wouldn't call that 'neglect'," G said, with entirely too much schadenfreude.

"I did say there's a tree house," Tori pointed, too sweet and reasonable.

" _Tree house?!_ "

 

* * *

 

“Oh, look out,” Deeks said lightly, “I think we have a stage four bromance on our hands, Kensi.”

“Will they or won’t they?” Kensi replied in a surprisingly convincing cutesy voice.

Standing in the kitchenette area and carefully unwrapping the package, Tori counted down seconds.

“You hear people talking right now?” G asked.

“Only people I hear talking are people who have been partners for more than five years.”

Tori huffed in amusement as she brought the tray over to the bullpen. “That’s what you get,” she informed Deeks and Kensi, and then carefully set the tray on G’s desk. “Happy fifth anniversary, guys.”

“Please tell me you did not make that,” Sam said, even as G said, “Please tell me that did not come from the mutant microwave.”

“I love you, too,” Tori informed both of them.

Simultaneously, Deeks asked: “I thought that’s a Synthetron?” and then yelped as Kensi punched his arm.

“If you have to know, Marah made the cake,” Tori told them.

“Is that why it’s covered in red and yellow flowers?” G asked as he stuck his finger towards one of them, intent on getting a scoop of frosting.

Tori reached to pull his hand out even as Sam tried to slap it away, and the two of them ended up running into each other as G - entirely too pleased with himself - got away with the frosting.

“Seriously, G?” Sam asked.

G opened wide, innocent eyes at him.

Better this way.

 

* * *

 

Dunross and Clark had been partners for ten years. The three of them figured they could get the best rapport by letting just Sam and G interact with them. That put Tori in a spare room at the boathouse, with a laptop and a large bag of crackers.

Dunross had broken protocol. That didn’t make her a suspect just yet, but it made her a person of slightly more interest than her partner. Tori watched both their body language as Sam declared the safekeeping of weapons “protocols” and held out the lock box. Clark knew that was bullshit, but he complied anyway. Dunross almost didn’t.

Flirting with G still didn’t make her evil, despite G’s notoriously bad taste in women.

“Well, you know,” Dunross said with feigned lightness, “a girl’s gotta protect herself.”

_Liar,_ Tori thought. Dunross wasn’t the kind of woman who’d refer to herself as a ‘girl’, not unless she was trying to paint herself as harmless. And if she was trying, that meant she wasn’t.

Mutely, G flipped open the switchblade.

“Yeah, I’m loads of fun on the first date,” Dunross said. This tone of voice was much more real: dark, sharp, bitter. It also had an edge of self-loathing to it. Tori tensed a little.

“Not that I have much time for them,” Dunross continued and no, that wasn’t right. She was talking too much. She seemed aware of that, too, but she kept going: “Been a DSS courier since I was 25.”

Clark stepped in, directing the conversation to him, but Tori only paid him minimal attention. There were only so many reasons for people to talk too much, and only so many of these that would hold power over someone who should know better.

Diane Dunross was feeling guilty over something, and Tori didn’t like the thought of what that might be.

 

* * *

 

“So, Roger’s got himself a Maltese girlfriend,” G said, reiterating Eric’s intel. “Could explain why he’d want a nice retirement fund.”

Tori hadn’t relaxed since Eric had told them about the connection between Clark and Malta. Her shoulders were set, and all of her attention was focused on G, but there was something else there, something under the surface of the competent demeanor. She was too-still, her eyes wider than they should have been, ready for a fight that shouldn’t have been necessary.

“Tori?” Sam prompted her; he’d rather hear what was wrong now than find out later.

“It’s Diane.”

She sounded sure, though there was an edge of pity in her voice. That was not something he was used to hearing from Tori. Alarm bells were blaring in Sam’s head.

“What?” G asked. His tone was sharp, surprised, bordering on defensive, and Sam knew this was about to explode in their faces.

“She isn’t going to let him leave,” Tori said, still in the same tone. “Not without a price.”

“She’s not the one with the foreign girlfriend,” G snapped back.

“Exactly.”

G was glaring at Tori now. “He’s our suspect,” G said, with a hard finality to his tone that almost dared Tori to question him.

“We should get back out there before they think something is wrong,” Sam said, hoping G didn’t pick up on the fact that Tori was giving him a pitying look. G just walked out of the room without another word.

 

* * *

 

“Does this really come down to loyalty between partners?” G asked, only turning far enough that he could see Sam in his peripheral vision. Granger was sitting on the opposite side of the table from Sam, with Tori across from G. She was the only one of them facing the table directly, instead of angled towards Hettie’s image on the screen, her arms crossed; she looked somewhere between bored and sullen, though there was an intense sharpness in the way she didn’t take her eyes off of him that said she was just waiting to spring into action.

He did his best to ignore her, though she was making it more difficult than usual. She had been acting completely irrational about this entire case since hearing that Clark had a girlfriend, and was taking it out on G. Diane had been upfront with G, and he had no reason to believe she was playing him. She had no reason to, and G would have noticed.

“How about fear? I still think Clark has something more on Dunross,” Sam replied, using his devil’s advocate voice.

“Well,” G said, turning around to face him fully, “Dunross clearly has something on Clark. And let’s not forget,” he added, a little snidely, “he’s the one with a girlfriend in Malta and dreams of starting a family.” He glanced at Tori, but if the jab hit home then she didn’t show it.

“Just because he wants those things doesn’t mean he’d work with the Pina Cartel to get them,” Sam replied, sounding a little defensive; the jab aimed at Sam’s own dysfunctional home life had hit where G intended.

“True,” G pretended to agree, and then turned it around, searching both his partners’ reactions: “But there’s also the matter of him attacking me.”

Sam nearly rolled his eyes, but gave G a sideways smirk instead. “True; there is that.” But his tone was mimicking G’s own. Tori’s expression still hadn’t changed. He was starting to feel like a mouse under the sharp eyes of a hawk that was waiting for the kill.

G scowled. “What, are you humoring me?”

Sam held the smile for a moment longer before letting it drop, his anger starting to bleed through. “We baited Clark, it worked. But just because Dunross is a loner with circumstantial motivation doesn’t mean she’s innocent.”

G pushed himself up from the chair at the word “loner”. Sam was starting to sound like he was taking Tori’s side in this mess. “Doesn’t mean she’s guilty, either.”

Granger finally spoke up as G settled next to him, standing at the head of the table with his arms folded across his chest, facing the video screen directly. “Fact is, Gornt couldn’t pull off a fake hijacking without one or both the couriers being in on it.”

“I agree,” Hettie replied. “We don’t have enough information to make a decision. It’s time for a change-up.”

 

* * *

 

Granger listened quietly as Eric and then Hettie explained the tac plan, nodding in all the right places. Clearly, that was too good to be true. “It sounds like you covered all angles,” he said at the end of the brief, and Sam just knew there was going to be a _but_ coming and that it was going to be a bad one. “Except one?”

“And what is that?” G challenged.

“Hanna makes more sense as backup with Agent Blye and Detective Deeks,” Granger said, in that _isn’t it obvious_ tone he usually reserved just for G.

No shit, this was a bad one. G and Tori hadn’t so much as said a single word to one another since Clark’s Maltese girlfriend had come up. Something about that had tripped Tori, and Tori hardlining against the bitter loner dependent on her partner had tripped G.

Tori’s face remained a mask, indicating she wouldn’t challenge the order, but if G protested -

Hettie caught G’s eye and pursed her lips, stopping precisely such a protest at the last moment.

This wasn’t good, this wasn’t good at all, and Sam hoped that it wouldn’t take anyone getting their chest full of lead to resolve this round of the see-saw.

 

* * *

 

That wasn’t just the pilot and the co-pilot waiting by the cargo plane, that was a whole SUV full of muscle. Nothing she couldn’t handle hogtied, but it also indicated that this was not going to be a simple handoff.

She knew that. G had to know that. Neither of them said a word. Metal clicked as one of the muscle pointed an automatic gun at her through the passenger side window while on the other side of the car another man pointed a handgun at G and yelled: “Get out of the van!”

They did.

“What happened to my men?” demanded the guy who’d just identified himself as the head honcho on the scene.

“They didn’t make it,” G said. “The Feds got ‘em. They killed them, but they couldn’t find the crate. Thankfully, we were able to recover it.”

“And who the hell are you?” asked Head Honcho.

“We’re couriers,” G said, and wasn’t it just lucky that Granger had swapped her out for Sam. “Diplomatic Security Service. I’m Clark, this is my partner Diane Dunross.”

He was playing it like Roger was the traitor. Tori breathed carefully, evenly. This was about to go very bad.

“Gornt was supposed to be here.”

“He got called back to DC,” G said.

“Why didn’t he tell me that?”

“Ask him yourself. He should be on the ground in two hours.”

“I went to great lengths to avoid meeting Gornt’s couriers in person,” Honcho said. He sounded upset. Upset wasn’t good. _Upset_ meant that there was a problem that needed to be solved, and G wasn’t going to like it when Honcho pointed that out.

“No problem,” G said.

She knew that voice. _Negotiation tactics won’t work here, you idiot,_ she wanted to tell him. Not like he would listen, anyway.

_Breathe,_ she reminded herself. _You’ll need it. Breathe._

“You trust Gornt, Gornt trusts us,” G continued.

Honcho cut him off. “Why should I trust Gornt? He never mentioned your partner getting involved.”

She saw that one coming, but she didn’t expect Honcho to be looking at ‘Roger Clark’ when he said that.

_No,_ she thought. _No, no, no._

“Gornt never planned on bringing your partner into this job, Clark,” Honcho continued.

“I’ll pay my partner out of my cut,” G said, quickly enough that she knew he’d seen that one coming.

Or he thought he saw that one coming, because Honcho was going elsewhere with this. He shook his head a little. “I like our plan the way it was before. Kill her.”

Why did they _always_ have to say that?

G-as-Roger reached for his gun, but - no fucking really - Honcho stopped him. “No,” he said, taking the gun away and handing it off to one of his goons. “You understand why I prefer to not give you a loaded gun,” he continued as two other goons moved in to restrain Tori. One of them, she noticed, was holding a crowbar.

“Use your hands, please,” Honcho said.

Tori knew that voice, knew the edge of pleasantness in it. That creeping old shadow was why she struggled against the goons, not because Diane would’ve. It did, however, remind her that she was supposed to be Diane.

If nothing else, it was better for G to see Diane, to hear Diane, and not her. She’d be better off that way, too.

“Roger?” she asked, pitching her voice into frantic panic. “Roger! What’s going on? No, don’t -”

G’s fist caught her at the cheekbone. For a split-second, she wanted to laugh. He was so careful to aim away from jaw and teeth. What she couldn’t fix Dustin would, later. He didn’t have to be careful with her.

She was supposed to not laugh, though. She was supposed to not rip the arms of the men holding her out of their sockets, even if she struggled. She was supposed to maintain their cover.

The second punch hit just to the side of her solar plexus. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t fight _just enough._ If she couldn’t kill them all, she’d have to take it.

She also couldn’t heal herself, not just yet. That was the worst of it: to feel the injuries as they formed and remember what it could be like - what it had been like - as someone pulled her by the hair and forced her head up. A little too short, a little too wide at the shoulders, but for a second -

“Finish her,” ordered a stranger’s voice.

Her eyes focused on the crowbar.

 

* * *

 

G stared at the crowbar, and then back at Tori. Except in the split second it took him to move his head, there was a gust of wind and some noise, and the two men who’d held Tori were lying on the tarmac, unconscious, and each with a clearly dislocated or possibly broken shoulder.

When G lifted his gaze, Tori was standing in the middle of a circle of four prone goons. She’d shifted, again. A moment ago, she’d laid limp in those men’s arms as if he’d beat the fight out of her. Now she was standing straight-shouldered and seemingly calm, though G had worked with Sam enough years to tell that stance for what it was.

He could hear a car coming close, but that was probably just their too-late backup. Tori’s eyes were scanning around them, but G knew that look and knew the way her gaze didn’t linger on him any longer than it did on the plane, the still SUV or the cartel guys.

Wherever Tori thought she was, whenever Tori thought she was, it wasn’t here and now.

The impulse to reach for her blindsided him, just like everything else about this situation. It had worked all of last summer - by August, it was enough that Tori woke up and saw him for her to fall back asleep, nightmares wiped away.

He knew what happened, in her nightmares. He knew what had happened to her. He’d just _hit_ her. He couldn’t reach for her; the mere thought made him want to get out of there before he’d hurt her again. Right now she might be more likely to rip his arm off, besides.

“Tori?” he tried.

Her eyes focused on him. Surprisingly, there seemed to be some recognition, there, flickering like a coin in a lake. Her shoulders dropped a little.

“You okay?” he tried again. He couldn’t make his voice sound as steady or reassuring as he wanted.

Her gaze sharpened, focused better, seemed more like Tori. Then the sharpness broke as the full of her earlier panic made its way to the surface.

He flinched when she moved, expecting to be hit. She froze, too. “Are you hurt?” she asked and, before he could formulate a response to that, her hands settled on his arms and she frowned. “Not that I can tell.”

Before he could figure out anything to say to that there was the sound of screeching car breaks, and then Sam was there, a hand on each of their shoulders. “Are you all right?” he demanded, looking between them, and then turned to Tori and repeated the question.

She blinked before she answered. “Yeah,” she said. “No bone damage, I’ll be good as new in half an hour.”

Sam gave her a disgusted, exasperated look that G was very familiar with, and turned to him. “You?”

G shook his head. There was a reason that Sam always played the betraying partner, when they had to run that game. This was going to be so much worse.

 

* * *

 

Now that Granger and the DSS agents were gone, Sam finally had a chance to focus on his partners and the mess they’d gotten themselves into this time. Granger may have made the call to have Tori go in with G, but the two of them had been digging this hole all day. And as usual, it was up to Sam to pull them out of it.

When he turned around and headed back into the main part of the boathouse, Tori was sitting on the couch with an ice pack held to her cheek, and G was frozen, staring at her like he’d forgotten she existed.

“Can I fucking heal myself now?” Tori asked the room at large, sounding exasperated. She sounded remarkably like herself, really, except Sam was pretty damn sure that she hadn’t moved an inch since G had sent her to the couch all those hours ago, not even to move her head.

Sam expected G to respond, but instead his shoulders tensed; Sam was at the wrong angle, but he could guess that G’s jaw had clenched too. “I don’t see a reason why not,” Sam told her, watching both of them as he spoke.

“Fucking finally,” she said, throwing the ice pack with enough force that it soared across the room; it landed in the sink with a loud clatter, made more impressive by the fact that she was nearly perpendicular to it from where she was sitting.

G still hadn’t moved, not even to watch the trajectory of the ice pack. He kept his attention fixed on Tori, the fresh bruise fading from her cheek before their eyes. She sighed and melted into the couch, her eyes closing. Sam could see the tension vanishing from her face as quickly as the bruise had.

“Better now?” Sam asked her.

‘Yeah.” She sighed out her reply, sounding weary; she sounded young and vulnerable in a way Sam just wasn’t used to hearing from her. A few bruises shouldn’t have made her sound like someone had just been shot again, even if the case had hit a nerve. Just because Sam didn’t know what that nerve was didn’t mean that he hadn’t noticed that.

“So, is anybody going to catch me up on what happened?”

That sounded like Tori had blanked out on at least part of the day. Sam expected G to startle at the revelation, but after another moment of motionlessness, he crossed the room, grabbing a chair from the table along the way. G planted the chair so its back was practically touching the arm of the couch that Tori was curled up against, straddling the seat so he was facing her.

“How much do you remember?” G asked, with none of the usual gentleness that he reserved for Tori.

Tori blinked her eyes open at G, her head tilted to look at him sideways, almost quizzically. “The pre-mission brief is the last clear thing,” she said. “I think I remember us in the van, but I’m not sure. Granger had to have pulled Sam out and put me in instead, right? And then we were standing by that plane.”

“You were right about Dunross,” G said, still in the carefully neutral tone he reserved for interrogations.

“That doesn’t explain...” Tori cut herself off abruptly. Her gaze turned sharper as she gave G a searching look. “What happened?”

The only reason G didn’t tense was probably due to long years of practice not showing reactions to suspects. But Sam could see the strain under the forced calm of his expression, and it took several seconds before G responded. “Dunross framed her partner, so the cartel guys thought it was him.”

That made Tori frown and sat up. The chair was flush against the couch, though, forcing her to straddle it from the other side so that her and G’s knees touched. Her hands rested on top of the chair’s backrest, between G’s.

“They wanted Roger to kill Diane,” she stated.

G didn’t break eye contact with her as he replied, a single, short word. “Yes.”

“What made me flip?” she asked. “It’s not like you can actually hurt me with your bare hands.”

Her tone was a harsh statement of fact. G’s head shifted just a little, breaking eye contact. Sam couldn’t be sure, but if he had to guess, his partner was probably focusing his attention on the back of the couch, just behind Tori’s shoulder.

Sam stepped forward, not quite into the bubble those two had around themselves, but enough to draw Tori’s attention. Sam had known G for five years now; there was no way he’d be able to answer Tori’s question. “One of them had a crowbar.”

Her eyes went wide, genuine shock for just a moment, and then she said: “Yeah, that would do that.”

For a few long moments, none of them moved. Then Tori’s entire body language changed, harshness melting out and lines softening, though Sam wouldn’t call that _relaxing._ She leaned forward a little and touched the back of G’s hand.

“G.” Her voice was soft, but the _Look at me_ was unmistakable.

G’s neck was stiff as he turned to look at her. The guardedness only lasted until Tori said: “You’re not him.”


	7. Law Of The Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
> 
> \- Hunter S. Thompson

The day started badly, and continued worse. It started with Deeks calling G - who then called Sam and Tori - before their normal work hours, reporting that Granger was interrogating Kensi in the boathouse. It continued with Eric rattling off the names of Donald Blye’s old unit mates, all of them dead in car accidents, three in the past couple of months and one of those only just that morning - and Kensi the last to speak to all three.

Someone was taking out the old sniper training unit. They could all agree on that much, even if most of them liked the one guy who was just missing, not actually confirmed dead, while Tori just had to bring up the possibilities of faked deaths and anonymous phantoms.

G sighed. “Granger thinks Kensi is involved.”

“Of course he thinks Kensi is involved, she’s the one of two named not-presumed-dead persons of interest he has contact information on,” Tori pointed out.

“What are you saying?” Deeks demanding, turning to her.

“She is _not_ saying that Kensi has anything to do with this,” G said firmly. “Just why Granger would think that.”

As Tori’s expression was bland and she didn’t initiate any attempt to reassure Deeks, Sam wasn’t at all sure of that. They needed a distraction, before G could prompt her. They’d deal with this later. “Give us everything you have on the sniper training unit,” Sam told Eric. “Starting with Kensi’s father.”

“All right,” Eric said after a moment. “Donald Blye’s unit was scheduled to participate in an all-night training maneuver, but Blye was incinerated when his car went off the road.”

“Military Police could only ID Blye’s corpse using dental records.”

That was Granger’s voice, sounding from the door. Unsurprisingly, none of the team shifted in his direction or so much as twitched.

“The official finding was, Blye died in a drunk driving accident.” Granger pushed himself between Sam and Hettie and placed a folder on the table. “Kensi refused to accept it.”

“What are you trying to prove, Granger?” Sam demanded.

Granger turned around to face him. “Sniper training unit was a cover story. The unit was actually a black ops team used for special missions.”

Tori shifted minutely, where she stood between G and Sam. _Or Donald Blye, if he’d had something to hide,_ she’d said earlier, when G had raised the possibility of faked deaths in a failed attempt at ridicule.

“So what’s happening here?” Deeks asked. “Is my partner under arrest?”

“Agent Blye isn’t under arrest, but she is a suspect,” Granger replied. “It appears your partner only joined NCIS to track down those she believes were responsible for his death.”

It was hard to miss what Granger was insinuating by _that._ Sam spelled it out anyway. “The men in her father’s unit,” he said, letting his disdain drop from every syllable.

“You’re accusing Kensi of murder?” G asked of Granger.

“I’m saying, check the facts,” Granger said.

“We will,” Tori said. “It’s what we do.” Her voice was relaxed and not nearly upbeat enough for Tori’s flip-and-perky mask. Sam didn’t dare to turn around and look at her, but he knew what he’d see: shoulders set just so, posture seemingly laid back. Killer waiting to strike, inviting the prey right in.

There was something he should remember -

“You’re not buying this, are you, Hettie?” Deeks asked.

“No, I am not, Mr. Deeks,” Hettie replied firmly. She picked up the folder. “But we will _certainly_ review the facts.”

G blocked Granger on his way out. “You’ve been conducting a secret investigation the entire time you’ve been here. What’s your part?”

Hettie stepped forward, bypassing Sam and walking right between G and Granger. “Assistant Director, a word in my office, if you would?”

“Of course,” Granger said blandly, and followed her.

That left just the four of them.

Now that Sam turned around himself, he could see that he wasn’t wrong about Tori and that G hadn’t failed to notice that.

“What the hell was that?” G demanded.

“What the hell was what?” Tori retorted.

“What you said to Granger. We’ll check the facts?”

“It’s what we do, isn’t it?”

“Are you saying you think Kensi killed all those people?” Deeks demanded.

“I’m saying I’m going to do my damn _job._ ”

That was off; Tori would use F-words like punctuation, but he’d never once heard her damn anything or send it to hell.

“There is no way that Kensi did this,” Sam said firmly.

“Then what are you all so fucking afraid of?” Tori shot back.

“That’s enough,” G said. “Come on, Sam. Let’s go check David Blake’s car.”

 

* * *

 

“Bad news,” Sam told G. It hadn’t taken him that long to find it, but neither of them had really expected this to be an accident, and Sam knew the signs to look for probably better than G did. “Small charge near the brake line. This wasn’t an accident.”

G straightened his back again, looking at his partner across the wrecked car. “Which means Kensi is now officially a murder suspect.”

“Only if we tell Granger,” Sam pointed out.

 _Or Tori_ , G almost said out loud. Kensi shouldn’t have needed to be protected from G’s partner, but for some reason, Tori had decided to throw the whole concept of team out the window that morning and side with Granger. “I don’t like it,” he told Sam. “Why would she do this?”

“Are we talking about Kensi, or Tori?” Sam asked.

“You think Granger could have brainwashed her?” G asked in return.

“ _What?_ ” Sam demanded, his voice rising an octave. “That’s it, the two of you are not allowed to hang out unsupervised any more.”

G just raised an eyebrow at Sam. “You got a better explanation for why she’s suddenly acting like this?”

“Yes, actually, I do,” Sam retorted. He stepped closer, allowing for a quieter conversation. “And so should you. The putative motive Granger assigned to Kensi is revenge. Specifically, avenging her father’s death.”

“Yeah, I was there,” G reminded him. “What does that have to do with Tori suddenly joining Team Granger?”

“The last time somebody on this team went avenging a parent, Tori didn’t take too well to it, either,” Sam said. “You were there too, when she pretty much told us that she and her old team were captured and tortured because her future husband and his brother went on a vengeance spree.”

G blinked, remembering the abandoned garage in Romania and the car Tori had demolished with her bare hands. He remembered Tori thinking the Comescus had laid a trap for him, but he didn’t remember why she’d thought that and he didn’t remember Blake and Hunter being part of it. “It’s still not like her to side with Granger,” G pointed out.

“She sounded like she was plotting where to hide Granger’s body, G,” Sam said, grimacing. “But yeah, she’s considering the possibility that Kensi might’ve done this. Just like she’s considering aliens and walking dead men.”

“She didn’t actually mention aliens,” G replied, almost automatically. “Still, I wouldn’t put it past Granger to have some sort of mind control device.”

 

* * *

 

“So,” G asked Tori as the four of them entered the trailer park. “Remind me again what’s the protocol for suspected brainwashing.” He phrased it like a hypothetical, but as far as Deeks knew, G didn’t ask Tori these kinds of questions without a reason. Unless this was one of those things they did while he and Kensi weren’t around, to pass the time.

“Brainwash or mind control?” Tori answered.

“Mind control,” G answered after a beat, putting too much thought into the question for it to just be a game.

“Seriously?” Deeks demanded from his place at the back of the pack. “Mind control is an option now?”

“Never rule out mind control until the house telepath clears you,” Tori replied, turning her head slightly. She then returned her attention to G. “And that’s your answer: call Cam. Which I already did, and Kensi’s clear. Now brainwash, that’s trickier, but if there’s anything wrong in the CIA’s files Nell and Eric would turn it up and I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Well, I’m glad to know that my partner hasn’t been secretly mind controlled without my knowledge,” Deeks said, “but that doesn’t help us figure out which trailer belongs to Fisher.”

“That one,” Sam said promptly, pointing to one of the trailers. “Other trailers are unkept; that one’s fairly squared away.”

“Not green,” Tori muttered. “And no frogs, not that I’d expect any, if it’s _squared away._ ”

“It’s pink,” Deeks stated the obvious. “And a rather horrible shade, at that.”

“Cranes and butterflies,” G said. He sounded like he was reciting information by rote, but Deeks felt like he was missing part of the conversation.

“And circles,” Tori added. Sam rolled his eyes and checked the side of the trailer as G opened the trash can, revealing empty MRE packages. Tori and G’s conversation about colours, animals, and shapes continued until they were inside, and G was on the phone with Eric, requesting security footage from the trailer park.

Deeks surveyed the small space until he saw a notepad on the table. He could just see the faint indentations on the paper where someone had written something down and torn off the top sheet. He found a pencil, rubbing the lead across the paper carefully. “I found something,” he called out.

“What are you, one of the Hardy Boys?” G asked.

“Or Nancy Drew,” Sam snickered.

“Laugh it up, boys, but check this out,” Deeks said as he straightened up and presented them with his findings. “He’s got a date. What do you think that is? Alexander Shelter, five-thirty.”

Sam held out his hand and Deeks passed him the notebook.

“Could be anywhere,” Sam muttered.

Deeks was about to reply to that when G’s phone rang. G glanced down at it, and put it on speaker. “What have you got, Eric?”

“Security footage from the park shows tons of people coming in and out in the last 24 hours. It could take days to go through all of this. There is one familiar face that stands out: Kensi Blye.”

The four of them exchanged looks.

“Well, looks like evil clones are on the table, too,” Tori commented.

“If it means taking Kensi off the suspect list, I’m all for it,” Deeks said.

“Clones are difficult to prove unless you can show someone was in more than one place at the same time,” G said.

“And then the real problem is who created the clone and why,” Tori added. “Which helps us fuck-all on this one.”

 

* * *

 

“Thank you, Detective Deeks,” Granger said to Deeks as they walked into the office.

“I didn’t do this for you, Granger,” Deeks shot back. The rest of the team came over from the bullpen, G almost brushing shoulders with her to face off against Granger and the two strange agents trailing behind him.

“Bad news, Agent Blye. Forensics team figured out that Blake’s car had been sabotaged. It’s funny how three trained agents and an LAPD detective missed that.”

“Well, we’re only human,” G said. His voice was bland, but she saw the corner of his mouth pull. It was nice to know that they had lied for her, even if she didn’t want them taking the fall just to cover her ass.

Granger returned his attention back to Kensi. “Orders from DC; I have to take you into custody.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kensi said. She was sick of playing Granger’s games all morning, of being treated like a suspect when she was finally _so_ close to finding out who’d killed her father. Her place was here, with the rest of her team.

“Kensi,” Tori said quietly. Kensi looked over. Tori raised her hand to the level of her eyes, splitting her index and middle fingers in a V, back of her hand facing outwards. V’s gesture; Kensi had seen her give it in concerts enough times. More than that: Vida’s best friend Chip had spilled on that time that this gesture was how he knew when Vida had broken out of the Vampire Queen’s control. Vida’s gesture meant _Trust me, I got your back,_ and maybe Tori was crazy but she was crazy loyal, too.

“Fine,” she snapped, overriding yet another objection from G, who gave her his version of a betrayed look. Deeks didn’t seem too happy, either; she let her hand brush his. “But only until you catch the _real_ killer here.”

When she stepped outside, the two strange agents flanking her, the pink butterfly that was one of Vida’s alternate forms was already hovering above.

 

* * *

 

They pulled into the alley by the old theatre.

“According to the GPS, you guys should be right on top of him,” Eric said.

There was a guy getting off a motorcycle. Or he had been getting off a motorcycle, until he spotted them and got right back on it.

“There he i- ” Sam began.

The motorcycle exploded. The man’s - Fisher’s - body landed a dozen feet away from the bike and rolled away, on fire and very, very dead. They were out of the car with guns drawn before the civilians in the area had managed to do much more than take cover or run away in terror.

“Well there goes our lead,” Deeks said, approaching the still-flaming body on the sidewalk. G hung back, scanning the area while Sam headed closer to the theatre, making sure no one had been hurt by the explosion. G turned around; Tori was still next to the car, leaning against the still-open passenger side door. She looked pale and shaken, and G could see that she was looking anywhere except in the direction of the slowly dwindling flames.

“It would be a hell of a lot easier to explain your behavior today if you had been mind controlled, you know,” G said, trying to keep his tone neutral. On a normal day, Tori would have snapped at him not to make jokes about that sort of thing, but he still didn’t have the first clue how she’d react today. That she’d called Kensi’s wizard friend to watch her back had thrown G for yet another loop; enough so that when Tori had asked on the drive over why they hadn’t told her about the car, it was Sam who’d brought up G’s theory about mind control. G still wasn’t entirely convinced, especially with her current reaction.

“Fuck you, G. I fucking hate fucking bombs. It’s like I never fucking get to them in time.”

That, at least, sounded like Tori. A really upset Tori, but G had enough experience with that to know the best course of action was to take the remaining five steps between them to put his hand on top of hers. She took a breath, and some of the tension bled from her shoulders; it would have to be enough, for now.

 

* * *

 

They were going to let Harris stew in the interrogation room a little, just to stay on protocol. Or, well, chill; Harris acted as if the whole thing was terribly amusing.

Tori was standing in front of the plasma when G and Sam turned back from the interrogation room door, digging into the Goldfish crackers and ignoring Granger.

“Now what?” G asked.

“I think he spotted all cameras and the fiber optic scope before you even closed the door,” she said. She didn’t sound particularly upset. Actually, she sounded rather amused, which was more emotion than she’d been showing most of the day.

“I don’t know where you got that from, Agent Hansen,” Granger said.

She shrugged. “We could roll back the feed and I’d point it out to you.”

“So we know he’s good at what he does,” G said. “Good enough to remain invisible.”

“He’s either five steps ahead of us or innocent,” Tori said.

“So now you like the guy,” Deeks said. “After you went I Told You So non-stop since Eric found out he exists.”

“Invisible criminal mastermind wasn’t my favorite theory,” she replied, as if that explained anything.

“So what was?” Granger asked.

She grinned at him. It was a standard-issue Tori grin, the kind she gave when saying things like _They tried to kill me and they weren’t my supervising agent, so I beat them up._ “I don’t do favorite theories.”

If Granger hadn’t been the one asking the question, Deeks may have brought up Tori’s mind control theories that were starting to rub off on G. But there had been an unspoken agreement among the team not to include the assistant director in the ninja loop, and he wouldn’t find their usual jokes to be nearly as funny as the rest of them did. “Dead man walking is a classic,” Deeks said.

“Is that your expert opinion, Detective?” Granger asked dryly.

“Well, it’s that or evil clones, Director,” Deeks replied, offering Granger his best grin.

Granger shook his head.

 

* * *

 

She would’ve broken out of the damn “protective” custody that was only protecting Granger’s ass. She would’ve, but the pink butterfly lingered on top of the curtains, a constant reminder that she wasn’t alone, and just because she couldn’t listen in on everything didn’t mean that Vida wasn’t in touch with the outside world.

The pink butterfly stayed with her as the two idiot escorts drove her to the meet point with Hettie, and as she made her way from there to the meet point Harris had specified. Maybe Harris had killed her father and was trying to lie his way out of it; maybe there really was someone else out there. Either way, though, she had a gun concealed under her jacket, a backup under her jeans, and a sorceress with a short temper. After fourteen years and two months, this was finally going to be _over._

Deeks was waiting with Harris by the stone table. They nodded at each other, and Deeks walked off. The meet point was a low point; Harris wasn’t likely to pick a spot that might get him killed, but he just might pick a spot that would get _her_ killed. Him surveying their surroundings with a scope was no reassurance at all.

“Let me be clear,” she said. “I will not hesitate to kill you.”

“I’d expect nothing less. It’s in your blood.”

Before this morning, she would’ve taken that as a compliment. Now it tasted bitter. She looked at him. “Why’d you kill Blake and Fisher?”

He grimaced. “I didn’t. Blake came to LA to meet with Fisher and me so we could figure out a way to stay alive.”

“From who?”

“You, we thought at first.”

He sounded positively fond; Kensi looked away.

“I know what happened to your father.”

She pushed herself up from leaning back against the table and turned to him.

“He didn’t die in a car accident, he was murdered,” Harris continued. “His death was staged to look like an accident. Man’s killing off the team is the same man who killed your father.”

He was drawing it out, and she was out of patience. “Okay. Who is he? What’s his name?”

Harris looked at her seriously. “After he takes me out, he’s coming for you.”

“What is his _name_?” she demanded, but even as she spat the last syllable, Harris jerked. His dead body flew back and crashed against the table, red blood highly visible on his blue shirt. More shots sounded. Kensi was on the grass, but she hadn’t thrown herself there. There was a pink shimmering glow between her and the world.

The magical net didn’t disappear until a full ten seconds after the last shot. Vida, in street clothes, pulled Kensi up to her feet, her hands never leaving Kensi’s shoulders.

“We need to get out of here,” Vida said.

“Like hell!” Kensi protested. “I need to find -”

“Like hell he can evade Tori,” Vida said. “And she’s not in the habit of killing people who still need to talk. We’re getting out of here. Now.”

 

* * *

 

G knew it was bad news when Tori streaked back, instead of calling. She wouldn’t have streaked if she had the sniper.

“What happened?” G demanded as soon as Tori was fully visible again.

“I hate it when they know what they’re doing!”

“You actually lost him?” Deeks asked.

Tori glared at him. “There was no one _to_ lose. This guy’s a pro, he had the rifle on remote control.”

“Do you think he knew...?” G began. Anyone who could take out a sniper unit and make it look like a series of accidents was bad enough news even if he didn’t know how to evade ninjas.

Tori shook her head. “No. But I’ll call Cam anyway. Come on, I’ll show you where the rifle’s at. Sam can get more out of it than I can.”

 

* * *

 

“Where is she, Eric?” Sam demanded as they stepped into Ops.

“We lost contact with Kensi immediately after the shots were fired,” Eric said while the four of them filed in and gathered by the central desk. “She’s gone dark. And will most likely stay that way until she wants to be found.”

“She can dodge surveillance in her sleep,” Nell pointed out. “And the chances of her using her credit card or cell phone are pretty much slim to none.”

“And she has Vida,” Tori added. “They’ve been learning from each other for months. I don’t think I can find them, either.”

“Off your game, today?” G asked Tori with a sidelong look. He wasn’t used to Tori misstepping like this, and there was a small part of him that got vindictive glee out of that. Especially when there had been an undercurrent of _I told you so_ since things with Harris came to light.

“Fuck off,” Tori retorted flatly. He may have deserved that one. “Sorceress, remember? She’s here to watch out for Kensi, and that’s what she’s going to do.”

He was about to open his mouth to reply with _Even if she’s protecting Kensi from you_? But then it hit him; Sam’s words about Tori and vendettas, the fact that she’d called in someone who was _Kensi’s_ friend, who Tori knew she couldn’t beat. “You have the most twisted logic when it comes to team loyalty,” he finally said.

“My first team was the most twisted ever, anyone can tell you that. Can we get on with the program, now?”

G gave her a wry smile before getting back to business. “All right, so Kensi is off the grid. We need to focus on what we _can_ control. Where is Granger?”

Eric froze, and then sighed. “Well, he seems to have gone dark, too.”

 

* * *

 

“Why are we on the streets, again?” Vida hissed as the two of them walked down the street.

“Because whoever did this is going to continue coming after me until either he or I are dead,” Kensi replied. She spoke quietly; she had the Bluetooth speaker visible in her ear so as to not have it look that she was talking to thin air - Vida had cast a spell making her invisible to all but Kensi - but this still wasn’t the kind of thing one casually said on the street. “And there they are,” she added, as she spotted the familiar Chevy SUV.

“Again,” Vida added. “Shall I?”

“Nah,” Kensi replied. She bolted into a nearby parking lot and ducked in between the cars. Predictably, the SUV followed into the lot.

Perfect.

Thirty seconds later, the guy was dumped on the asphalt - nose broken, ribs cracked, throat smashed - and Kensi and Vida were making away with the SUV.

“Oh my god, you are worse than Nick,” Vida informed her. “Actually, you’re almost as bad as the ninjas.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Of course you would.”

“Prepare to turn right,” the navigation system announced.

Vida reached for it. “I’ll just - ”

“No,” Kensi said. “I want to see where it takes us.”

 

* * *

 

“Let’s say Kensi tracks down the man who killed her father,” G posited idly. He remained leaning against the passenger window, carefully neutral. “Then what?”

“She’s a federal agent who’s sworn to uphold the constitution,” Sam responded. It sounded as if he’d been rehearsing that inside his head all day. “She’ll have him taken into custody to answer for his crimes.”

That was too precious. G turned to look at him. In the back seat, Tori snorted, arms crossed on her chest.

“Or she’ll try to kill him,” she said.

“Try to?” G asked.

“I’m pretty sure V won’t let her unless there’s a _really_ good reason.”

“Hey,” Sam protested. “Revenge is not what we do.”

Tori snorted again.

G’s phone rang before any of them could say something more. “Talk to me, Eric.”

“So I went through the footage of anywhere a guy could sit with a laptop,” Eric said nervously. “And we got an image of Assistant Director Granger fleeing the park.”

“With or without a laptop?” G asked.

“Or anything that could a laptop,” Sam added.

“You two do realize that a netbook could fit under his jacket, right?” Tori asked.

“No laptop that I can see,” Eric said.

“Somebody had to leak the location of that meeting,” G said.

“It had to be either Harris or Granger,” Sam replied. “And Harris seemed to be pretty intent on walking from this alive.”

“We haven’t ruled out Dead Man Walking yet,” Tori pointed out.

G twisted around to look at her. “Seriously.”

“You say it like that never happened before.”

Eric cut in. “As fascinating as that is, I located the car that Kensi’s driving.”

“You do realize that that means Kensi and Vida are no longer _in_ it, right?” Tori asked.

“Worth a shot,” G replied.

 

* * *

 

The French doors to Kensi’s house were ajar when they arrived. G hit the bottom with his foot, kicking it open to allow Sam and Tori to follow him into the living room. Kensi wasn’t exactly the neatest person in existence, but Sam knew the signs of someone deliberately trashing someplace. He and G kept their weapons raised as Tori looked ready to drop someone in the blink of an eye with her powers. Something had changed between those two--again--back at Ops, and while Sam couldn’t figure out what, he was just glad they seemed to be back to the status quo. He didn’t need to be worrying about his partners on top of trying to keep Kensi alive.

There was a noise from the kitchen, and then Granger stepped through the door holding a Remington 700PPS sniper rifle. He held it with the muzzle pointed up, in a position that suggested Granger wasn’t going to shoot them.

“You took your time. Did you hit traffic?” Granger asked. His finger inched a little too close to the trigger for Sam’s liking.

“Put down the rifle,” G ordered.

Granger didn’t seem flustered having two guns trained on him. “Unless you replaced Director Vance without my knowledge, I strongly suggest you try it this way: ‘Put down the weapon, _sir.’_ ”

“Do what he says, Granger,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off of how Granger was holding that rifle. Sam could get a shot off before Granger could bring it around into position.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me?” Granger challenged.

Sam raised an eyebrow. Granger really should have known that Sam wouldn’t aim a weapon at someone if he didn’t have the balls to use it. He stretched his trigger finger as a reminder though.

“Point taken,” Granger said, casting a glance towards Tori, who was hovering behind Sam’s right shoulder and probably looking menacing. Granger turned and placed the rifle on the kitchen table before turning back around again, hand reaching into his jacket. “Hang on.” He pulled out his service weapon, keeping his fingers well clear of the trigger, and placed that on the table as well.

Once he was disarmed, G and Sam lowered their weapons. If Granger still had anything hidden on them, they still had Tori.

“Place has been searched,” G commented, glancing into the bedroom.

“It wasn’t me,” Granger replied, a little too quickly.

“So we won’t find your fingerprints?” Sam asked, walking into the kitchen to check that there weren’t any hidden surprises waiting for them.

“You won’t find anyone’s prints,” Granger said. If this had been a normal crime scene without the assistant director present, Sam would have expected G to ask Tori if invisible men left fingerprints.

“What happened at the park?” G asked instead.

“I wasn’t the one shooting people, if that’s what you mean.”

Sam put his gun away, picking up the rifle carefully. It wasn’t the rifle from the park - that was in evidence - but it still seemed odd for Granger to have a sniper rifle in Kensi’s house. “Still think Kensi’s a suspect?”

“I did it for a reason. Someone at NCIS had to consider the possibility. Now I know there’s more to it.” Granger was too calm about this entire thing, and it was starting to set Sam’s nerves on edge.

G glanced towards Tori. “In the future, don’t think so little of us.” It was never good news when Tori was this kind of calm. Particularly as she had not only been tense since morning, but also stopped trying to hide it since Kensi and Vida took off. “I consider everyone a suspect.” And that was a pointed response directed at Granger.

“This either hasn’t been fired recently, or it’s just been cleaned,” Sam said, before Granger could say anything about Tori’s comment. Granger didn’t know Tori the way Sam did, so maybe he’d take it at face value; Sam didn’t want to think about it any closer than that right now, either.

G was giving Granger an expectant look. “It’s time we had a talk,” Granger finally said.

“I got just the place for it.”

“Your boat shed, Agent Callen? You going to put me on the bad side of that interrogation table?”

“You’re about to find out,” G said.

“ _Sir_ ,” Tori and G chorused, a beat later.

Sam resisted the urge to groan.

 

* * *

 

When Deeks followed Kensi into the garage so they could talk without the risk of being seen, he hadn’t expected another woman to just appear out of thin air. He’d never met Vida Rocca in person, but with black military style boots, worn black jeans, black-and-pink layered shirts, and dark hair with turquoise and green streaks in her hair, there wasn’t anyone else this could be. He’d seen pictures of her online, and posters on the streets when THT was on tour in the LA area, but the pictures never quite captured the aura of badassery surrounding her. He was almost surprised that she wasn’t wearing spiked cuffs or chains around her neck that could double as weapons or big rings that could almost be brass knuckles.

He’d thought she’d left Kensi alone, allowing Eric to get a lock on the car Kensi had acquired, but maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised that she could turn invisible; she _was_ a witch, after all.

“What, have you never seen anyone appear out of thin air before?” Vida asked.

“Uh, hi. Vida, right?” he asked, feeling suddenly awkward around Kensi’s friend. “Marty Deeks. I’m Kensi’s partner.”

“I think I figured that out at some point in the last few minutes,” Vida said, sounding amused. She turned to Kensi. “Is he always this easily embarrassed?”

“Only when he thinks he’s being smooth,” Kensi replied.

“Hey,” Deeks protested. “Lots of women find me not embarrassing, I’ll have you know. You gonna tell me now why we came to this house?”

“Because the man tailing me was headed here,” Kensi retorted. “You guys question him yet?”

“You didn’t exactly leave a lot to interrogate, Kens,” Deeks replied. “The guy’s in the ICU.”

“Awesome,” Vida said. Deeks could see why she was friends with Tori.

“So what happens now? What happens when you catch up to the guy who took a shot at you? You gonna ask him if he killed your father?” Deeks asked. _Pull the trigger if he says yes_? he didn’t ask out loud.

“That’s a reasonable assumption at this stage,” Vida said. “Two bad guys, they always get in each other’s way. This is not it.”

He wanted to say more, but it would probably only make things worse. “So what’s this guy got to do with the woman who lives here?” he asked instead.

“You need to keep her in protective custody for me,” Kensi muttered.

“Why?” Vida’s expression darkened at Deeks’ question.

“Just please do this for me,” Kensi begged; Kensi _never_ begged, not like this.

“Why? Why is she so important?” Deeks pressed.

“Because she’s my mother.”

“Kens.” Vida bumped Kensi’s shoulder. “I told you already, I could call Nick or Maddie, you know they would -”

“Too many of you guys around here, and it would be impossible to cover up,” Kensi said. Then she turned back to Deeks. “Keep her safe for me?”

 

* * *

 

Once upon a time, the appropriate response for Hettie shepherding the Assistant Director into the interrogation room would’ve had to do with popcorn. That was before that time someone from Wardrobe had microwaved popcorn in the office, and Tori spent the following week scrounging the entire complex for shreds of popcorn, because apparently it had dimensional holes in it. Suffice to say, popcorn had been strictly banned from anywhere Tori might be required to be at.

“Got crackers?” Sam asked dryly.

Nobody actually went for the crackers, though.

“So you’re going to remind me of our history together,” Granger said as he and Hettie took position inside the room.

“I’m going to insist you tell me what the hell is going on,” she replied.

“I didn’t kill Alex Harris. Or any members of Donald Blye’s Black Ops unit. Nor did I try to kill Kensi or ransack her apartment.”

“Whoever did is a very busy man.”

“He’s also been dead for six years.”

“Peter Claremont,” Tori said, almost in perfect sync with Granger.

“Is this where you say _I told you so_?” G asked Tori.

“This was totally obvious,” Tori replied. “We were down to Dead Man Walking, and that had to be either him, or Donald Blye.”

“So Claremont faked his own death in 2006,” G said. “Why not before? Why not after?”

“What changed in ‘06?” Tori asked.

“Now that I think about it, 2006 was a special year,” Sam replied.

“Kensi Blye joined NCIS,” G finished.

“Granger said the first thing she did was start pulling files of the men who were in her father’s old unit.” Tori tensed at Sam’s statement; G nudged his shoulder against hers.

“So Claremont knew there was something in those files that was going to lead her to him,” Tori said; she sounded calm, but she was leaning against him. “And he figured she’d be going for bringing justice to _him_.”

“So he killed Donald Blye. The question is, why?”

 

* * *

 

“There’s a man from your father’s unit who’s still alive,” Granger told the speakerphone.

“Peter Claremont,” came Kensi’s voice across the line, sounding as if she’d just had a revelation.

They all startled. All of them, that is, except Tori. She was looking smug. Again.

“You knew?” Granger asked.

“He’s in old photos of my dad. I thought I saw him a few minutes ago but I wasn’t sure, so I let him live.”

“She let him _live?_ ” Sam repeated in a whisper. That wiped the smug expression from Tori’s face. There was something dangerous in the sudden blankness, and G was just glad that Vida was between Tori and Kensi.

He hoped Vida would be enough.

 

* * *

 

“What are you gawking at?” Granger demanded as he walked up to them outside of Kensi’s mom’s house, gun in hand.

“It’s just that it’s been a long time since you were operational,” G said. “ _Sir_.”

“I lost Claremont once. I’m not going to let that happen again.”

“Good thing it’s not up to you this time,” Tori said. “Personal investment tends to make for bad decisionmaking. _Sir._ ”

The look Sam gave her was more hostile than the one Granger did. G and Deeks seemed mostly amused.

“What are we up against?” Granger asked.

“Claremont’s team has as many as four shooters,” Sam said.

“What are you doing?” G demanded as Tori straightened, primary in one hand and backup in another.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she retorted, extra-sweet for their observer. “Back in a sec, don’t go anywhere.”

There were five of them. They could take on four SpecOps grade shooters. Probably. Tori figured that this day sucked enough that she did not want to find out.

The bad guys had automatic weapons. Of course they did. Not that it mattered. She got the first one in the neck, rolled to the side, got the second one in the head as soon as he peeked out from behind the column, and then had to wait for the other two to show up. She picked them out simultaneously, going for headshots as they were bound to have body armor and they didn’t actually need these guys for questioning.

By the time everyone else showed up, she’d already cooled off her backup and tucked it back where it belonged.

Her team was used to her, but Granger’s eyebrows were trying to make up for the hair he didn’t have. “Nice shots,” he remarked.

“Can we please move inside now?” she asked.

Granger, of course, tried to get in the front of the pack; G, of course, didn’t let him. They fanned out as they stepped in, anyway, clearing the space. Tori could tell them that they didn’t need to - she could tell exactly how many living bodies were in the house and where from outside - but protocol was protocol, and it was a good habit to maintain.

“Kensi!” Deeks shouted.

They found her halfway down the stairs, standing with a gun and a bloodied knife in her hands. Claremont was below her, on the landing, collapsed in a heap with his back against the wall, legs at odd angles. His arms didn’t look so hot, either, and the right side of his jacket was soaked through with blood from multiple penetrating wounds. It didn’t look like Kensi had been punishing him, though. Tori knew what _that_ looked like. It looked as though he’d put up one hell of a fight.

The knife in Kensi’s hand was at the wrong angle to throw - and of the wrong model for that, really - but the gun was well-held and aimed.

“Kensi?” Deeks asked again, tentatively. He was the only one of them in easy view from Kensi’s position. The rest of them stood in a loose half circle, and Kensi would need to look or fully turn her head around, to see them.

Not that it mattered if Kensi could see her, specifically. Tori’s gun wasn’t aimed at her; she could realign it quickly enough, and she didn’t even really need it. She could kill Kensi several different ways without moving from the spot. She could stop Kensi in a dozen other ways, if she could bring herself to do _only_ that, when she moved.

A pink butterfly hovered above Kensi’s gun.

Kensi pointed her gun down. “There’s plenty of time to save him,” she spat as she came downstairs, passing her father’s killer without a glance. “But I won’t do it.”

Claremont’s arm moved.

_Gun._

Two shots rang out as Granger put two in his chest. Claremont was dead before that, though, blood vessels in his brain burst out.

G looked at her. She nodded.

 

* * *

 

Tori didn’t even hesitate when Kensi walked into the bullpen, throwing herself at Kensi to wrap her in a hug. Tori was acting like Kensi had very nearly died today, which wasn’t too far off the truth, but bore a certain sort of irony considering Tori’s actions. G wasn’t about to say that out loud, not where Kensi could hear. She’d missed out on most of that particular drama of the day, and the way she was returning Tori’s hug said she was oblivious to how the morning had played out.

“Welcome back,” G told Kensi.

“How does it feel?” Sam asked from his desk, leaning back with his hands in his pockets. Deeks was sitting on the front edge of Sam’s desk, not taking his eyes off his partner.

“People keep asking me that,” Kensi replied. G recognized the tone in her voice; he’d been there himself not too long ago.

“It tends to happen when they care about you,” G told her, moving to join Sam who had picked up his things to leave for the night.

Kensi looked down for a moment, then looked up again. “Guess I know things will never be the same for me, and... strange.”

“That’s also a good thing,” Sam said with a smile.

“So, who’s for Italian?” G asked, directing the question mostly towards Tori. He figured Kensi would want to go home, and Deeks would keep an eye on her, which left him, Sam, and Tori.

“I think I’m under house arrest tonight,” Tori said ruefully, focusing her attention down on the floor. “Blake wants to make sure I’m in one piece.” She shrugged and looked up, looking G in the eye before continuing. “It’s been that kind of day, y’know?”

That Tori had a bad day was no surprise to him, but that she would turn down dinner with him and Sam threw him off. It must have been a really bad day, and G was glad to see that her husband was willing to keep an eye on her tonight. He shrugged. “I was in the mood for pancakes, anyway.”

She smiled just a little, then tilted her head at Deeks, who opened his arms for her. She accepted the offer, hugging him tightly, before giving Sam the same assessing look she’d given Deeks. Sam smiled as he rolled his eyes, holding one arm open for her. She didn’t bother giving G that look after letting go of Sam, wrapping both arms around him.

It wasn’t her usual end-of-the-day hug; she clung a little tighter and a little longer, face pressed against his chest. He almost felt like the hug was the only thing holding her together in that moment, and he wasn’t about to let her fall apart, not after they had made it through this day with no one hurt and Kensi finally at peace with her father’s death. He held onto her until she let go, pulling back but lingering under his touch for a moment longer.

She looked at ease for the first time since Deeks’ phone call that morning, the tension gone from her shoulders. Still weary, but they’d had a hell of a day, and she’d probably be better once she’d had dinner and soaked in her hot tub.

“See you guys tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” G replied.


	8. Minefield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth." - Rebecca West

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> The authors would like to draw your attention to the chapter count. This chapter is not just number 8, but number 8 out of ten. We began this project (which wasn't even a project at the time) with no endpoint in mind. Hence, the number of chapters had been left undetermined. However, we can now tell you that _Salt_ will end after wrapping up the fallout from the events of episode 4.01.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and we hope to hear from you!
> 
> Hagar & Sol

Deeks had gone to get Hodgkins, and Kensi was probably babysitting the rest of Green’s team.Tori was alone in the observation room when G entered it. She glanced back at him but, otherwise, was watching the one-way window as if there was something there to watch. Sam was still the only person in the interview room.

“Ever thought you’d hear him say that?” Tori asked before he had a chance to ask her what was going on.

He leaned against the window frame, back demonstratively to it. “Say what?”

“‘I need to do this alone’?” she quoted, making it a question.

Sam’s SEAL background was important to Tori. G knew that, and he had a pretty good idea why. Tori’s desk had two photos of her old team, and only one of her sister. “Even Sam needs to do things on his own sometimes.” He didn’t like admitting that, even to Tori.

“Yeah,” she sighed; it didn’t quite sound like agreement. “Question is, which things.”

“Are you going somewhere with this, Tori?”

She looked at him. He really, really hated the cases that put this kind of a look in her eyes. Like she’d seen awful things, and like she was seeing five steps ahead of him – and the same awfulness was waiting on them.

There was movement in his peripheral vision; Hodgkins entered the interview room. Tori focused on the SEAL for a moment, and then turned to G and asked: “Do you mind if I go check some things?”

He could ask what sort of things, but she’d just replied to a question with a question, she still had that look on her face, and he well remembered the previous cases she’d reacted to like this. Whatever was going through Tori’s head, she didn’t want Sam to know; and what G didn’t know, he couldn’t lie to Sam about.

This case was already tearing Sam apart, and it was only going to get worse.

G indicated with his chin towards the door. “Get out of here.”

Tori didn’t need to be told twice.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Commander Westerman was the first to intercept Sam in the hallway. “We’re a go/no-go, agent Hanna,” he said, getting in Sam’s face. “Either they leave now or the mission is aborted. You have your confession.”

The observation room’s door opened. In his peripheral vision, Sam could see G and Tori stepping into the hallway as well. He hadn’t seen Tori since she refused the Green interview; Sam was getting a bad feeling about this.

“The ISI agent is being apprehended as we speak,” G said. “We got lucky; the transmission was cut off by an electrical malfunction.”

Electrical malfunction, the hell. So that’s what Tori had been setting up. Suddenly, Sam breathed easier. The mission wasn’t compromised.

“Are my men getting on that plane?” Westerman demanded.

Sam looked at G. G looked back at him.

“Sam?” he prompted.

There was only one right answer, really. As much as it hurt. “Finding no physical evidence, I have no suspects at this time on the death of Ensign Powell. Put your team on the plane, _including_ Petty Officer Foster.”

“Your director aware of your findings?” Westerman asked suspiciously.

“Get your men on the plane,” Sam told him. “Quickly.”

Westerman gave him one last look, and left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

G and Tori blocked Sam from the driver’s door of the car. That didn’t surprise him, much. Tori was obviously in a mood; if G managed to talk her out of it with something as small as this, and given that unlike G, the kid could at least pretend to be a sane driver, then Sam would suffer through it just this once. Particularly as Tori confirmed that she did arrange for a ‘family visit’.

Then Tori stopped the car at the road’s shoulder.

“Why are we stopping?” Sam asked.

G twisted in his seat so he could look directly at Sam. Tori was staring staunchly through the windshield.

“We couldn’t have this conversation on base,” G said, “and we can’t have it at the office, either.”

“What’s going on?” Sam demanded.

“They killed Powell because he was a traitor,” Tori said. Her voice was emotionless. “They didn’t mean to, but this can’t always be predicted in combat. Then they lied about it, and then they lied about it again.”

“They had a mission,” Sam pointed out. He knew he was repeating himself, but he had to believe what Green had said, that the only thing that mattered to the team had been the mission. “They’re on it now.”

Tori turned to look at him. “Do you think that it was just that?” she asked. “That they would’ve done this if everything was as it’s supposed to be, except for the two hostages?”

The question hit him like a sucker punch. Tori wasn’t a soldier, for all that she knew war, and this was the question of someone who knew what it meant to be a _soldier –_ not just a fighter, not just a killer. “No,” he said eventually. “They wouldn’t have.”

“Westerman knew, Sam,” G said. “When he got up in your face on whether you still remember what it means to be a SEAL, when he baited you with Row, he already knew. He knew that they’d killed Powell, and he knew that they may be compromised.”

That had been when they only just arrived at the base that morning. Sam’s heart beat slow and steady, the result of years and years of practice and conditioning. “You have proof of that?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

It was Tori who answered. “Yes, we do.” After a moment, she added: “You had your cell phone on you.”

“What?”

“You had your cell phone on you when you stepped into that last interview,” G said.

Sam had disconnected the camera. He’d drowned his earwig. His cell phone was turned off, but he hadn’t taken it apart. If G and Tori knew to expect his actions –

“You have it recorded?” he asked.

“All of it,” G confirmed. “And nobody outside this car knows that until right now, you didn’t know.”

 _SEAL to SEAL._ He’d promised. But his partners had gone behind his back. Yes, something was wrong at that unit. But still.

“What happens now?” he asked. G and Tori knew him that well, they should also be able to tell just how unhappy he was with them at the moment.

“They go to Hindu-Kush,” Tori said. “They do their job, be heroes, bring people home. And then this unit gets taken apart, because that’s the best way to protect those people.”

She really did believe that.

“Sam?” G asked.

Sam shook his head. “Just drive.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Five feet from the gym's door, Nell had to step back and flatten herself against the wall as Tori stormed past. No sooner did Nell try to approach the gym again then G burst out of the same door, in his gym clothes and with a towel still over one shoulder, and Nell had to flatten herself against the wall again.

This time, she counted to ten before attempting to move.

Sam was the only person in the gym when she stuck her head in there. He was standing in front of the new training machine, frowning. "What was that all about?" Nell asked.

Sam turned to look at her. "That," he said, pointing at the machine. "I told Hettie that thing was evil."

Under normal circumstances, Nell would file that expression under Sam's renowned preference for old-school training. These, however, where Tori circumstances. "Do you mean 'evil' as in, idiomatically so, or...?"

Sam huffed. "It didn't try to kill anyone. Yet. But I think Tori might kill it if it's still here when she comes back in."

"Riiiight," Nell said. "Though that looked like Tori trying to not destroy federal property."

Sam shook his head. "That was as bad as that time Mia from wardrobe tried to make popcorn. This thing is going into storage."

 

 

* * *

 

 

He found Tori standing by the fountain in the yard, same as she always did whenever something spooked her during work.

"Hey," G said cautiously from ten feet away. She was staring at the water, which was never a good sign, and holding her elbows tightly, shoulders pinched, which was even worse. Just because she hadn't reacted to him badly yet didn't mean that G was going to not be careful.

She didn't say anything but she turned fifteen degrees towards him. G took that for tacit permission and stepped up to her, slowly, making sure to keep a foot of distance between them as he also stood by the fountain. She turned to face him, but she was still clutching her elbows, and she didn't quite look up at him.

He knew that look. That was what Tori looked like when she felt embarrassed – guilty, really, ashamed – of whatever landmine they'd unknowingly stepped on this time. Not a minute before she'd stared at the trainer like she was going to tear it apart; new cool-off speed record, for an anger flare this intense.

"Sam hates that thing too," he said. His tone was light but he kept his focus on her, looking for the tiniest tells. Sometimes these were all he got, with Tori, particularly if she already hit the guilt part. "He'd probably cheer if it got destroyed."

Small flinch. One day Tori might not punish herself for anger, but this wasn't yet it.

Still, the tacit permission got her to smile a little and try to look up at him. "At least it wasn't a kangaroo?"

"Kangaroo?" he repeated.

"Yeah," she said. The smile was gone, but eye contact was good. "At least it isn't a fucking boxing robotic kangaroo."

G made a mental note to ensure the OSP hub would never have photos or figurines of kangaroos of any kind. Just to be on the safe side. "Definitely not a kangaroo," he agreed.

There, another small smile, and she relaxed her grip on her elbows, shoulders dropping. She just might be safe for indoors. Still, the boxing machine would have to go, particularly as it was May already.

"Uh, guys?" called Nell's voice.

Tori and he both turned. Nell was standing at the doorway, shielding her eyes with her hand. "Kensi and Deeks are here," she said. "Hettie wants us all in Ops."

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Now, Rich Mayfield is Point Blank’s proprietor,” Eric said, pulling up a third driver’s license. Illegal weapons trafficking wasn’t that uncommon for them to deal with.

“Bet he doesn’t do reiki,” Sam said to Deeks. Kensi grinned. Deeks had walked right into Sam’s trap downstairs, and none of them were going to let him forget it any time soon.

“Ex-Army Ranger and suspected mercenary; Earl Mayfield was Rich’s nephew,” Nell narrated. “Also employed are Rich’s brother Blake, cousin Neil, and step-daughter Mara.”

“ _Please_ tell me that there are no Hunters, Kapris or Lothors in this clan,” Tori said. There was a very slight emphasis on the ‘this’, and she sounded like she’d spoken before she’d thought, which was rare for Tori.

“Looks like someone is trying to give your family a run for their money in the crazy department,” Kensi said, hoping to break the sudden tension coming from G’s direction.

“That would be _Cam’s_ side of the family, and unless Rich shot both of them, they’re not even close,” Tori said, as if that was a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Isn’t Blake _your_ husband?” Deeks asked. The look he received for it from Tori didn’t hold any humor. He held his hands up inoffensively. “Hey, you know, just making observations.” He looked at Sam. “See what you did? You messed up my energy flow, man.”

“Rich Mayfield was Army,” G said, interrupting before Deeks could shove his foot any further down his throat than he already had. “Any of the rest Navy, Marines?”

“Negatory,” Eric replied.

“The Mayfields have hired another employee recently,” Hettie said. She indicated towards the screen, where another image popped up – a very familiar one.

Kensi blinked, surprised. “Renko.”

“For whatever reason,” Hettie continued, “Special Agent Renko is undercover at the Point Blank gun shop.”

“You don’t know why?” G asked.

Hettie’s expression flickered. “In the words of Mr. Beal, that would be a negatory.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Well, I guess I should be thankful to _somebody_ for saving my bacon,” Renko said lightly. He, Kensi and Tori were standing by the cars; Deeks had just had to arrest the blonde – even knowing Kensi would give him hell for it later – and G and Sam were prowling around the parking lot, giving it one last sweep.

Kensi uncrossed her arms. “Oh yeah? Who might that be, Renko?”

That was just asking to be teased, and Renko didn’t disappoint. “Hm, let me see. Callen, Deeks, Sam – definitely Sam – and definitely Tori here.” Renko gave her an appreciative look that was purely for the purpose of making Kensi jealous. “I don’t think I’d ever seen anybody tackle someone across half a parking lot like this, that was straight out of Twilight.”

“Is that it?” Kensi asked.

Renko feigned innocence. “Yes, I think that’s about it.”

“There’s nobody else you could think of?”

Renko grinned. “There might be somebody, but I can’t seem to put my finger on –”

A distant shot rang out, the high-pitched whine of a bullet. Everyone went down – Tori among them – but there was the way you threw yourself to the ground, and there was falling, and Renko definitely did the latter, body twisting with the momentum of what was apparently a really fucking nasty bullet.

“Shots fired!” she heard Kensi shouting above her, but that shot had come from _really_ far away, and Tori had other priorities. Renko might as well be Team, she knew that, but there were too many people in the parking lot – too many people who weren’t Team – for Tori to pull the bullet out and pull the shattered tissue back together. The bullet had hit him in the jaw, besides, and while she could do bones if she had to, she fucking hated it.

She put her hand over the entry wound, putting pressure on it – that too was habit now – even as she reached through the tissue itself, rebuilding the blood vessels, minimizing the injury. By the time Kensi looked down at them, Tori could already afford the spare attention to glance at her teammate and say: “I’ll be riding with him.” The bullet went all the way through and tore up the carotid artery on its way – Tori had already pulled that one closed and could make it look as if it’d taken a different path, but that would take time.

For a moment, Kensi seemed as if she was going to argue. Then she had to have done the math – too many witnesses, but that didn’t make Tori useless – and she nodded tersely. “Take good care of him?”

There was only one answer to that. “Team is team.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had been four hours since Renko had been rushed to the hospital with Tori riding along. G had been busy, and he knew that this sort of surgery took time, so he hadn’t been expecting to hear from her yet. But he knew his partner well enough to know that she probably hadn’t moved from the waiting room since she’d arrived at the hospital, even for food. Sam hadn’t argued when G told him his plan; swing by Tori’s boat and get her a clean shirt, then stop at her favorite Italian place for takeout, and not leave her side until she’d eaten it all.

She was hunched forward in a chair as he approached, but as he got closer, she sat up straight, attention fixing on him with laser precision. He held out the bag with the pasta and a large bottle of orange juice. “Bleu cheese alfredo and walnuts,” he told her, but she had already grabbed the bag from him and was opening the plastic container.

“Shit, I’m hungry. This is so much harder than the other way around.”

G raised an eyebrow at her as she spoke with her mouth full. “Didn’t have a chance to come sooner. There’s a clean shirt for you, too.”

“That’s going to have to wait until I’m sure he’s not going to code on the table fucking _again._ ”

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but G could see the tension in her shoulders. If she hadn’t been there, Renko would have died.

“So, what did I miss?”

He gave her a momentary wry grin as she changed the subject before he could. “White agreed to help us. We tracked down a couple more former Point Blank employees. You’ll never guess what one of them did before getting kicked out of the Army.”

“Since you ask, I presume sniper.”

“We tracked him to a motel in Sun Valley,” he told her. He waited a beat before continuing. “Our sniper got sniped.”

She frowned. This time, she took the time to swallow her food before talking. “I hate being baited.”

“But who’s the one laying the bait?” he asked.

She was back to inhaling the food. “Someone who’s actually good at this.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

G wasn’t really upset that Sam had called Tori away from Renko’s bed, Sam decided. Upset that he’d called Tori, yes, but Renko was just a convenient excuse – that Tori had had a return serve for. She wasn’t exhausted like she’d been in Yemen, but she was a lot crankier than she’d been in Romania, once Sam adjusted for everything _else_ that was wrong about Romania, other than Hettie getting shot.

Granted, there was plenty wrong about this case, too. The silence in the car was tense as they drove through the dump yard, headed towards the signal.

“100 yards directly in front of you, you should see him any second,” Eric said over the comm line.

“It’s too damn early in the game for him to reveal himself,” Tori muttered. “But he’s not the type to try and blow us all up in one go this early either.”

There was definitely a man there: white, in his fifties, arms held up and to the side, holding something in one hand – damn. The man was holding a cell phone.

“You just _had_ to talk about bombs, didn’t you,” he grumbled at Tori.

Her expression was as blank as G’s.

The five of them rolled out of the car, fanning out. Kensi and Deeks had the big guns, this time; they covered the area. Sam, Tori and G all had just their service-issue handguns – and these were all trained on the presumed Chameleon in front of them.

“I told you he’d come,” he said.

It made no sense, except a second later a voice shrieked through the cell phone: “Callen!”

Good news was, the cell phone was not a bomb trigger. Bad news was, Lauren Hunter was involved somehow. There was an echo to Hunter’s voice, a double quality. Sam glanced to the right. There was a car there, parked half hidden next to a pile of construction rubble. There was definitely a person in the driver’s seat, struggling to get free of bonds he couldn’t see from this distance.

“I thought you said you know who I care about,” G said. That voice made Sam’s spine stiffen; it was the same voice in which G had said _Kill them all_ a year before.

The presumed-Chameleon’s smile gained an edge. “Well, in that case...”

The car exploded.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The five of them reconvened at the boathouse just before dawn. Deeks knew that Kensi had spent the night at the hospital with Renko, having picked her up on the way in to work. Sam looked like he hadn’t slept, which meant he’d kept an eye on G all night, which didn’t surprise Deeks at all. The Chameleon was deliberately messing with Callen’s head, baiting him into something that they hadn’t figured out yet.

Tori looked like she’d slept at least a few hours, at least. Everything else was off with her; she was standing off to one side, arms crossed over her chest, not even looking in G’s direction. She looked like she was waiting for a kill order; _anticipating_ it, eager for the chance to use her skills, like a lioness on the hunt with her prey in sight.

It was times like these that reminded Deeks just how dangerous Tori actually was. Ninjas were assassins, and Tori chose to follow the rules when they suited her. She had proven that in Yemen, and again in Romania, and Deeks didn’t doubt she would do it again now that she had been provoked.

The TV screen came to life with an incoming video call. Eric and Nell were flanking Hettie and Granger. Hettie looked older than usual, worn around the edges, and Deeks wanted to believe it was simply because she hadn’t slept; Granger looked angry, though this time at least it wasn’t directed at them.

“Son of a bitch is all yours, Agent Callen,” Granger ordered. G was on his feet and moving towards interrogation before the connection even cut.

Sam and Tori both moved to follow him. Their eyes met in silent confrontation. Deeks held his breath, waiting to see how this would play out. He wasn’t sure if he was surprised when it was Tori who backed down, but the look Sam gave her was grateful as he followed their partner into the room.

Kensi turned on the video feed, and Tori settled back in with the two of them to watch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What have you got, Eric?” Sam demanded as they returned to the boat house’s main room.

“The cell phone has been turned on,” Eric said over the video link. “GPS puts it in an abandoned warehouse downtown. Address is uploading now.”

“Why wouldn’t Janvier edit out what she said?” Kensi asked.

Deeks turned towards her. “Either he doesn’t care, or he wanted us to chase it down.”

“He wants us to chase it,” Tori said. “There’s a bomb with our name on it waiting there.”

 _Once a bomber, always a bomber._ Solid reasoning, there: Janvier was very good at his game, but he did tend to use the same small set of signature moves over and over again. Obviously Tori would call out the bomb, too. However, this time was different than the other two. “This time, we know it’s there,” G told the room at large and then turned to the door. “Don’t lose that signal, Eric.”

“Not you, Agent Callen,” Granger said over the video link.

G stopped in his tracks and turned around again.

“I want you to keep the pressure on Janvier,” Granger continued. “ _Don’t_ test me, Agent Callen.”

G turned to look at Sam and Tori. Sam nodded back. Tori pulled her non-OSP phone out of her pocket just enough for the grinning dragon logo to show, the promise of slow death that’s been hanging around her since Lauren’s death momentarily stuffed behind a front of professionalism. She said: “Three’s enough.”

That wasn’t Tori’s decision to make, but the words were just a smoke screen to hide the silent message that they _wouldn’t_ be just three of them at the warehouse.

“Right, nobody’s getting kidnapped by aliens,” Kensi said, and turned towards the door. Deeks followed her. Sam glanced at G again, and then headed out as well.

The video link blinked out. It was just Tori and him, and Tori was already on the phone. “Favor still valid if I need people kept alive?” she asked whoever it was on the other end. Very short beat – just enough time for a ‘yes’ – and she said: “Got an explosive ambush. I’ll text you the address.” Another beat, and she hung up and did as she said she would before pocketing the phone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

With Sam in the field with Kensi and Deeks, Tori entered the interrogation room with G. He took the interviewer’s chair. Tori dragged the free chair back against the wall and sat down, legs stretched forward and arms lightly crossed on her stomach.

Janvier eyed G out of the corner of his eyes. “You let me go once,” he said, as if he was hoping that would happen again.

Deliberate serve.

“I didn’t know who you were,” was G’s predictable response, not giving Janvier anything new to work with. He pushed himself up and went over to loom over Janvier.

“But now you do.” Janvier looked up at G. “And you would still have to let me go.”

She didn’t need to see G to know he just smirked at their prey. The same expression was on her face, small, arrogant and deadly.

“It’s not gonna happen,” G said as he stepped back, prowling the perimeter of the room. “How’s your mouth?” he added after a few moments.

Janvier hummed. “I still get headaches.”

 _Good,_ she thought.

“Good,” G said softly.

“I find sea air helps,” Janvier said.

He wasn’t just careful to not follow G with his eyes, Tori noted. He looked down at the table, at his own hands, whenever he wasn’t deliberately making a point. Cautious, this one, and not entirely taken in by his own brilliance.

She was hoping he’d be more arrogant than this. Arrogance made people easy.

G put his palms flat against the table and leaned down. “You slipped up the day I shot you,” he said, apparently thinking along the same lines as Tori.

The barb hit home: Janvier looked up at him, lip pulling down in a snarl. “It won’t happen again.”

_You sure about that?_

“You sure about that?”

“Are _you?_ ”

Yeah, two could play the brick wall game. Brick wall was a defensive maneuver, though. Janvier could be genuinely worried that they would turn out to be this good, or he could be trying to play them into believing that. Tori wasn’t ready to take a stand on that, yet.

G slid back into the chair.

“Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a piece to gain advantage,” Janvier said, as if imparting some great wisdom. Tori’s lips pulled in a snarl of her own.

Janvier continued. “You need to know your opponent’s next move before he does.”

G had tilted his head to the side just so as Janvier spoke. “Yes,” he agreed. “I do.” He leaned forward, elbows and forearms on the table, fingers laced together. “And I did.”

Janvier’s pupils widened in surprise and he flinched back as he realized what G had just intimated. So he hadn’t known to be properly wary of them before.

 _Good._ That would throw the rest of his game off.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Tori and he were still in the room when Hettie stepped in. G’s Romani was just good enough to understand that Hettie asked _Are we to assume that you speak Romani?_ and Janvier answered _Yes, but not as good as you._ Then, in English, Janvier asked: “Was anyone killed?”

“Yes,” Hettie replied after a beat.

“Good.”

What Hettie said was a lie, but it was also an interrogation serve. G was already standing. He pulled Janvier out of the chair and shoved him against the wall one handed, pulling his gun out with the other. “You want to kill someone?” he demanded, pouring hurt into his voice, tears in his eyes. “Try me!” He shoved his gun against Janvier’s chest. “Take, here. Use this.”

No scrape of chair, no sound of shoes on concrete; Tori hadn’t moved yet.

“All you gotta do is squeeze the trigger,” G continued, driving his breath ragged. “Take it. Take it!” he ordered, when Janvier was yet to move.

“And give you an excuse to break my neck?” Janvier shot back.

G stepped back, taking his gun with him. “I don’t need another excuse.”

“You valued the life of Agent Hunter less than the others.”

 _That_ actually connected. G never got to shove his gun’s muzzle in the bastard’s throat, though. There was the crack of human violence, and suddenly he was looking at Tori’s back. She’d moved faster than he could see and had knocked Janvier to the floor with what probably was a backhand, given everyone’s angles – a close-handed backhand, knowing Tori’s style.

Janvier was coughing, but he wasn’t spitting out blood or teeth. Not a surprise, again knowing Tori. She didn’t believe in leaving evidence.

“You don’t get him,” she spat.

“I assume you’ll be the one to stop me,” Janvier sneered.

Tori picked him up by the collar and dumped him back in the chair as if he weighed no more than a kitten. “Yes.”

“You kill me, either one of you, and I win.”

He expected a blow to the back of Janvier’s head – standing in his blind spot, Tori was perfectly position to deliver that – but Tori didn’t. Instead she said softly, poisonously, in a tone of voice he hadn’t heard since that cave in Yemen: “You’re not my first date, _cherie._ ” Then the blow came, and she held Janvier’s head pressed against the table as she bent down to say, speaking so quietly it was almost a whisper: “I don’t mind you knowing this, did you notice that? That’s how much I’m unafraid of you.” She straightened, but she didn’t release Janvier.

He’d almost missed this Tori.

“That’s enough, Agent Hansen,” Hettie said from where she was still standing in the doorway.

Tori patted Janvier’s hair before she let him go. “No,” she told Hettie conversationally. “It really isn’t, but it’ll do for now. Don’t party without me,” she tossed over her shoulder in her routine flip and perky, and exited the room.

Hettie didn’t twist around to look after her, barely. The agent standing guard outside failed at not flinching as she passed.

“You have to admit it,” G said lightly as he headed for the door, also tacitly releasing Hettie from having to decide which of them to supervise. “The girl parties in style.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sam, Kensi and Deeks were already checking their rifles when G and Tori finally arrived. A single glance at the car revealed why: G was driving. As crazy a driver as G was, Tori was significantly worse.

Unsurprisingly, Tori’s eyes went straight to Sam’s shirt as she shut the car door behind her, and she didn’t look too happy. “I hate that shirt on you,” Tori told Sam.

 _Told you so, big guy,_ Deeks thought silently. Tori’s partner should’ve known better; Deeks had done the math regarding _Blue Bay Harbor_ and _2003_ months ago.

“Tough luck,” Sam shot back.

And G was wearing petrol blue, Deeks noted. Sam’s and G’s shirts were the sort of thing Tori only let slide on good days, and this was not a good day for anybody.

Deeks did actually have a contingency plan, but: “Shit, I forgot my pink shirt at the office.”

“You have a pink shirt?” Kensi demanded. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’ll have you know that pink complements my complexion perfectly,” Deeks told her.

Tori seemed a hair calmer – maybe – but there was no flick of recognition on either Sam’s or Callen’s faces.

Deeks really hoped that it was just because this day sucked for everyone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Everyone tensed when Tori raised her hand in a _stop_ motion outside the boathouse. G looked at her questioningly, but Tori just reached out to open the door, very silently.

Granger’s voice carried over, barely audible: “...someone like this before?”

Hettie’s voice came a beat later: “No.”

The five of them started down the hall, silent.

“He’s evil,” Granger said.

Tori’s expression became even more blank than it had been before.

“He’s many things,” Hettie replied. “But there’s only one thing he’s not, and should be. _Dead._ ”

“Are we going to do something about that?” G asked as the five of them filed into the room, making their presence known.

“No, Agent Callen,” Granger replied. “They’ve authorized the exchange. We give Janvier what he wants, we let him go, we get Atley, and the identity of our asset in Iran is safe.”

 _Oh hell no,_ Kensi thought.

G turned to Hettie. “You’re gonna let this happen?” he demanded.

It was Granger who replied, though. “We’re all gonna let this happen, Agent Callen.”

G stepped up to him. “So Lauren Hunter died for nothing?”

“She died to protect an asset who may be the only thing standing between us and another war in the Middle East.”

“There will always be another war in the Middle East!” G replied hotly.

The plasma chimed. “Sorry to interrupt,” Eric said on screen, Nell behind his shoulder. “We identified the man Janvier met with at the Santa Monica Pier. His name is Nassim Vaziri. He’s Iranian.”

“He runs an international air freight business,” Nell continued, “and the NSA believes he has close ties to Iranian intelligence.”

“What if Atley already told Janvier the name of the asset in Iran?” G asked. “Janvier then sells the name to this Iranian, Vaziri, before he sells Atley backs to us.”

“Janvier gets paid from both sides,” Sam continued. “Cherokee gets compromised.”

“Cherokee could’ve already been picked up in Tehran!” G shouted. “They could be torturing him right now!”

“Eric, find out if there’d been any transfers into Janvier’s accounts in the past 48 hours,” Hettie ordered.

“It’s too late,” Granger said. “We have to proceed. We need to get Atley back, and that’s the price we pay.”

“The price we pay?” G demanded.

“You need to let this go.”

“He killed our people!”

“We’re all out of time, Agent Callen! And we don’t have another plan!”

Kensi looked at Hettie; G did, too.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Callen,” Hettie said, very quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” G said. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

They’d defied Vance’s order befores – they’d _resigned_ and gone rogue, before – but these orders came from higher up the food chain than Director Vance. These were not orders they could fight.

“Maybe there is,” Hettie said, slowly.”But to make people believe it, I think I’m going to have to resign.” She paused, taking a breath, before addressing G. “And you, Mr. Callen, are going to have to shoot Janvier.”

“Bad idea,” Tori said.

Kensi startled. Tori had been so still that Kensi had nearly forgotten the other agent was there, even though she should’ve known better. Everyone turned to face her, but Tori didn’t move. She looked still enough to be a statue, unnaturally still. _Ninja still._

Her expression was what got Kensi, though. Too blank, too _empty._ Whoever was considering them all out of those eyes didn’t look like Tori. This was, officially, more creepy than the casual _forceful_ interrogation in Romania had been.

“He doesn’t want to help Iran,” Tori said. “He doesn’t even want the money. What he wants is power. What he wants is revenge for having been wronged. The person he wants to exact it from is Callen.”

When was the last time Tori had used G’s last name?

“Nobody is going to kill Janvier, Agent Hansen.”

“Think I’m naive, Assistant Director? I had a better opinion of you than that.”

“Do you have a better idea?” G asked.

Tori shrugged. It was too fluid and obviously artificial. “I already slammed his face into the table.”

“When did that happen?” Granger demanded.

“I didn’t leave bruises,” Tori promised. She sounded too-innocent, but for all that she sounded like the teenaged surfer chick she must have been once upon a time, her promise held a truth to it.

“No,” G said, and that was directed entirely at Tori.

“He’s not getting you.”

“He’s not getting anyone,” Sam interjected. “No one is actually killing him.”

“You really don’t get this, do you.”

Kensi had never heard Tori talk to either of her partners quite like this; her tone was on the razor edge between pity and contempt. G was glaring at her and she was meeting it with a raw look of her own, while Sam looked like he wanted to lock both of them in a room for their own protection. Kensi was sorely tempted to call Nick; the wizards knew how to deal with Tori on a bad day, but there was a protocol that Kensi didn’t quite understand, and calling Nick would breach that.

“That’s enough, all of you,” Granger said tiredly. “Did I mention we’re out of time?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sam moved several paces away from G and Janvier as Kensi and Deeks approached with Atley between them. He felt exposed out here, especially with the surprise news crew that Janvier had called in while making arrangements for the swap.

“Sam!” Kensi called out, pointing. Sam spun, and sure enough G had his gun drawn.

“G, no!” Sam yelled.

“You’re not going anywhere,” G said to Janvier.

“Are you going to shoot me for the whole world to see?” Janvier asked. They had attracted the attention of the news team; G turned to look at himself on the jumbo screen, gun never wavering.

“Slight problem with that,” Tori said. The video feed turned to static. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Don’t try to stop me,” G snapped at Tori.

“I told you,” Tori said, but she was talking to Janvier. The eerily calm tone she was using was never good news “You don’t get him.”

There was a single loud gunshot; Tori was gone in a swirl of black before Janvier’s body even hit the ground, her weapon, badge, and NCIS phone in a neat pile. G was staring openly, gun still held at the ready. Marcus and Ives pulled up in their borrowed patrol car a moment later. They didn’t know the plan had just changed, and Sam had no way of communicating that until they weren’t in public any more, which meant letting them handcuff G as Kensi checked Janvier’s pulse. His only reassurance was that Tori wouldn’t have bothered with a gun if she had really been trying to kill him, but Kensi’s confirming nod still came as a relief.

This was still a clusterfuck.


	9. The Team Always Wins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst." - Walter Weckler

Kensi really hoped that Hunter would be able to explain any of this. She’d spotted him in the crowd lingering around the scene of Janvier’s supposed murder; he wasn’t even trying to hide. It didn’t take a genius to connect the _lightning ninja_ to the malfunctioning electronics, from the jumbo board still sizzling with static above to the bomb that had failed to detonate earlier that day.

Hunter didn’t have to linger, didn’t have to make himself visible. By doing that, he made himself into a legitimate witness for NCIS to question. The scene was too chaotic, so Kensi indicated for him to follow them and then caught up Deeks and Sam before they got in the car. The jumbo board – and, putatively, the news team’s camera – wasn’t the only piece of electronics malfunctioning.

Deeks had twitched at the large, intimidating bike that followed them to the boathouse anyway.

“So you’re Hunter,” Sam said by way of greeting as they all piled out of the van.

“Guilty as charged,” Hunter replied easily. He hung his helmet off the motorbike’s handle.

“Sam,” Kensi said warningly. With G in jail and Tori on the run, Sam was going to be picking fights with everyone and anyone, and right now they needed information from Hunter, not to antagonize him.

“Nice job with those news cameras,” Deeks said. “Wish I could do that.”

Hunter shrugged. “Cassidy’s a friend of a friend. She wouldn’t have given you trouble either way.”

Kensi raised an eyebrow; it shouldn’t have surprised her any more how many people the ninjas seemed to know, but Hunter, of all people, talking about it so casually was interesting. The handful of times she had met him, he had mostly been Shane’s silent shadow.

“Why don’t we go inside and you can shed some light on what’s going on?” she suggested.

Hunter glanced at the building. “This your usual hangout?”

“We don’t bring outsiders to headquarters,” Sam replied with a scowl, arms crossed.

“Didn’t peg you for suicidally stupid,” Hunter agreed, ignoring Sam’s attitude. “So assuming you want to have a real conversation and keep your equipment in working order, may I recommend the pier?”

Kensi didn’t feel like explaining to Hettie why they needed to replace all the recording equipment in the boathouse, so she headed down the pier, not giving Sam or Deeks any other choice except to follow. She stopped at the end, turning to face the three men.

“What the hell was she thinking?” Sam demanded before Kensi had the chance to speak.

“Probably that she’s protecting someone,” Hunter said, “but it would be easier to say if I had a clue what’s going on.”

He sounded like G during an interrogation, with a careful casualness that hid a sharp edge. “Tori didn’t tell you?” Kensi asked.

“Would your team leader like it if she did?”

“Hasn’t stopped her before,” Sam grumbled.

Hunter’s expression closed off. “I’m going to believe you just said that because you had a really bad day.”

She needed to get this debrief on track before Sam and Hunter got into a pissing match. “Callen was supposed to shoot the guy,” Kensi said. “That was the plan we agreed on.”

“Looks like Tori didn’t agree. She doesn’t usually stay silent about things like that.”

“Callen had the most reason to shoot him,” Kensi replied.

Hunter’s posture shifted from relaxed to tightly wound, like a puma ready to pounce. “You say that, and you’re asking me what she was thinking?”

“She put the whole damn plan at risk,” Sam snapped.

Hunter gave him a disparaging look. “You do remember we’re talking about _Tori._ ”

“And maybe someone needs to remind her how to follow orders,” Sam retorted.

“Where the _fuck_ did you get the idea that following orders is what she’s _for?_ ” Hunter said. The words were too quiet, almost a hiss.

“Is that all she is to you?” Sam demanded. “Some role to fill in your precious little team?”

Hunter looked murderous, barely keeping himself in check. “You don’t get to talk like you know anything,” he spat, “because you don’t.” He turned towards Kensi, demonstratively ignoring Sam.

“We need to know what Tori’s next move will be,” Kensi cut in before Sam could push the argument any further.

“What would’ve been the next move if your team leader had shot the guy?”

“Make himself easy to be found by the people we want finding him,” Kensi replied.

“I suppose displaying a really obvious leverage should come next?” Hunter asked, his tone suggesting he could already tell how their plan was intended to play out.

“Yes,” she said. “Though I doubt we’ll be able to use who we’d originally intended to, now.”

Hunter made a small noise of amusement. “She’s got parents, a sister, and a _really_ visible husband. Don’t worry about protecting them. Whoever fucks with my baby brother will be sorry, and we’ll handle her family.”

At least that meant Kensi could tell Granger and Hettie that the plan wasn’t shot completely to hell. None of them would like the idea of involving civilians, but Tori hadn’t left them a whole lot of choice. She looked back and forth between Sam and Hunter.

“Tell her to get in touch when you talk to her,” Kensi told Hunter.

Hunter snorted. “I was useful. She’s not calling me again on this unless she needs me to bail anyone out. Again.”

“Then tell Cam to tell her,” Kensi said.

“Was checking in part of the original script?”

“Callen wasn’t supposed to be on the run from the authorities,” Deeks pointed out.

Hunter considered. “She’s only pretending to be on the run. She’ll leave a thick trail and stay by the water.”

They also needed Tori to check in for Callen’s and Sam’s peace of mind, not just for operational reasons, but Kensi was in no hurry to have Sam and Hunter _not_ ignore one another. She nodded at Hunter, unable to say _Thank you._

Hunter nodded back at her, and turned to leave. He stopped by Sam, though, standing right next to the big guy. Well: Sam was barely any taller than Hunter, but he was twice as wide.

“I suggest you can that attitude by the time this job’s over, if you don’t want to break Tori’s heart,” Hunter said, very quietly. “And if you do break her heart, I think I’ll take a leaf out of her book and snap your neck.”

“You’re the expert on breaking her heart and vendetta killings,” Sam replied coolly.

“Attempted killings. To date,” Hunter said, lightly. Before Sam could reply, he turned and walked away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Almost a year before, Tori had ambushed Sam outside his home, revealed some seriously unsettling facts about the power that had shaped her late teens and – as Sam had learned – the rest of her life, and then swore Sam to tell G should the need arise. Sam had hoped it wouldn’t. The more time passed, the more incidents and behaviors that Sam had to match up against what Tori had told him, the more he wished they would never have to talk about this.

They weren’t yet out of the police station before Sam realized that they were going to have to talk about it. He’d expected G to be angry – angry that Tori had snatched his prey, angry that Tori had put the mission at risk. G was angry, yes, but not at Tori; he rounded at Sam after Kensi had called him with whatever her version of the Hunter confrontation had been. As for Tori – well. G remembered Diane Dunross and Roger Clark just fine, and that case had made a mark. That, and – as much as Sam hated to think about it – the Powell case. Ignoring Tori’s warnings, outlandish as they had seemed, had not turned out well for them in the past.

G wasn’t going to doubt Tori’s judgment on this. If Sam wanted him to _think,_ then he needed to give G reasons to, and that meant having to talk about _that._

He took G home and made ravioli, first. This was going to be hard anyway, and they’d both be in a more forgiving mood on a full stomach. Maybe. Less unforgiving, at least; or so Sam hoped.

“We need to talk,” Sam finally said; they _had_ been talking, of course, but that had been Sam catching G up on the changes in the plan. “About Tori.”

G crossed his arms over his chest. “What about Tori?” he asked, wary and protective like Sam was some sort of external threat, which was exactly why Sam needed to tell G about this sooner rather than later.

“She’s not thinking clearly right now, G. She’s reacting on instinct to the way you’ve been going after Janvier,” Sam said.

“Seriously, Sam? This again?”

Sam scowled. “She’s the one who told me about this, in case you ever needed to know. Because she wouldn’t be able to tell you herself.”

“Told you about _what?_ ” G snapped.

“Have you seriously never noticed the way she acts towards you, G?” Sam asked. He was genuinely surprised that G could be so unaware of what was happening between him and Tori.

G never bothered to hide his emotions when it was just the two of them. Sam could see the anger first, and then G actually working through several more before replying with a question of his own; it was one of G’s favorite interrogation techniques. “And what way would that be, Sam?”

“Romania comes to mind,” he said dryly. “Getting the information we needed from Dracul.”

“She did worse in Yemen,” G retorted defensively.

“You stopped her in Yemen,” Sam said.

“We left Abdul to die of dehydration. I wouldn’t call that mercy.” But G seemed even more defensive. Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Tori had offered to do to Abdul before G stopped her.

“I can’t exactly feel sorry about that,” Sam said. “But you know what she said to me on the beach in Romania?”

G glared. “Would it matter if I said no?”

“She said that for her, torturing Dracul would be like me having to bury someone alive.”

G didn’t have a response for that, eyes wide in shock. He looked the sort of distressingly, impossibly young he only did when something seriously bad had happened. Sam hadn’t meant to upset him quite that much, but he needed G to actually listen to him instead of blindly defending Tori. Especially when Tori had been the one to place this burden on Sam in the first place.

“She doesn’t _think_ when it comes to what you need from her,” Sam explained. “She called herself a problem-solver. _Your_ problems.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“The power shaped her, when she was a teenager. Shaped all of them. Molded them into something the team needed,” Sam said. “Everyone had a role.” He nearly spit the last word out.

Sam’s words were finally getting through G’s shock; his eyes narrowed as he picked apart what Sam was saying. “The ninja powers don’t work this way.”

“How many times has she told us that the ninja powers don’t determine who fights on those teams she never talks about unless pressed?” Sam asked.

“So this is that other power,” G said slowly. “This is what you and Hunter were talking about. You complained she doesn’t follow orders, Hunter got angry because apparently that’s not in her role description,” G said wryly, “and...” He trailed off, an expression of dawning horror on his face.

“And Janvier made himself one hell of a problem for you,” Sam said, drawing them back to the case at hand.

“Janvier is not what she flipped about.” G sounded certain, thinking on the fly as he worked through their current mess. “She flipped out on my even pretending to kill him. She doesn’t like vendettas.” His expression shifted from spooked to confident. “She _said_ she wasn’t okay with this plan. She hasn’t been wrong yet, Sam. I should’ve listened to her.”

Well, he wanted G to be more aware of what was going on. That much was good. However, the world wasn’t actually what it looked like from Tori’s perspective, and G buying into that kind of crazy was not a good thing. “I think you might have been right not to listen to her this time, G,” Sam said. “Everyone screws up sometimes, even Tori, and she knew you weren’t actually going to kill Janvier.”

“She was right about Dunross and she was right about those SEALs,” G said, stubbornly. “If she gets hurt –”

“She was wrong about Kensi,” he interrupted before G could really get going.

G’s jaw tightened in a typical show of stubbornness. “What the hell do you expect me to do, Sam?”

“I expect you to _think_ , G, since Tori won’t.”

G let out a sharp exhale of air, not quite a snort. “Well, now that I _know._ ” He sobered. “Do you think we can do this?” He paused, looking vulnerable again. “Because this isn’t getting better, Sam. This – Tori isn’t.”

Sam sighed. “We’ll figure something out,” he finally said.

 

 

* * *

 

 

LA beaches were uncomfortably open. Nights like this, Tori missed the rockier beaches of Northern California, with their sheltering rocks. Out here it was all open sand in all directions, all directions but the water. Out here it was dark. She had a few more hours to go before the moon would go up, and even that would be a measly crescent. Sane people didn’t go into the water in complete dark, but Tori wasn’t sane people and also, the water wasn’t going to hurt her.

When she got back to where she’d left her things, someone was holding her towel to her. Tori scowled even as she snatched it from G’s hands. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why’d you do it?”

Hurt, check; upset, check. _Good,_ she thought as she toweled off briskly. _Things should never have come to that._ “Were you followed?”

“Give me a little credit here,” he replied.

“I’m not feeling charitable,” she told him. She dropped the towel on the sand, bent over, picked up the half-empty bottle of vodka and took a long swig.

He toed the bottle that was already empty. “Didn’t waste any time, did you.”

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” she quoted cheerfully.

“From where I’m standing, your definition of freedom looks like falling off a surfboard because you’re too drunk to know better than to surf at night.” He retorted angrily, and then paused. “I thought we’d moved past that.”

And yes, okay, that sounded betrayed enough to hurt. To hell with that.

“Well, you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore,” she said, and made a point of taking another long swig before placing the bottle down again. “And don’t tell me that’s not why you’re here.”

“I’m here because we’ve had to spend the last day picking up the pieces of that stunt you pulled in the park,” he replied. “And I want answers.”

“Didn’t I just say I don’t _answer_ to you, anymore?” she said sweetly as she closed the rest of the distance between them. “And I wouldn’t have had to pull that stunt if you were –”

Ah, there. Almost close enough.

“If I were what?”

_There._ One of the thugs had the fucking balls to get far too close, and Tori pointed that out to him by kicking his knee in. It was a little hard to hear the kneecap shatter over that miserable scream, but she’d take the noise as evidence enough. The next one was stupid enough to try and grab her; his angles were good enough that, sadly, she couldn’t break his elbow when limiting herself to normal human strength. She twisted his shoulder all the way through before tossing him to the ground and adding a stomp for good measure. She also liberated his gun, and aimed the butt of that at the third one’s jaw, snapping it clean off the hinge.

“Got any more toys for me to break, Naseem?” she said, raising her voice a little.

“You are not what you seem, Ms. Hanson,” Vaziri said.

“Oh look, it has a brain,” she said, all mock sweetness covering the sharp edges, and then let the mask fall off and her voice harden. “Get the fuck out of here, Naseem, before I decide to take you out for a _swim._ ”

“This is a public beach,” Vaziri replied. “And I did not come here for you.”

It was full dark, so she didn’t bother narrowing her eyes. “Callen,” she said, very neutrally, “get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you here with them,” G replied.

The stubborn protectiveness was adorable and completely fucking stupid. “Really, after all these years? Get out of here before I put that bullet in your head myself. He’s mine, Naseem,” she added in Vaziri’s direction. “You don’t get to touch him, NCIS or not.”

One second, two, three, and then G’s steps sounded against the sand, drawing cautiously close to her. Tori stayed put. In the dark, Vaziri and whoever was with him couldn’t see G touching her elbow, and the wet fabric of her wetsuit made no noise at the light touch.

“Tori...” The broken whisper was only barely audible above the waves.

_Don’t swallow. Don’t hesitate. It’ll only hurt more. Don’t apologize; you’ve no reason to._

She cocked the gun. It made a satisfying click.

G dropped his hand in defeat, and left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

G left the beach, Sam’s warning from the night before still fresh in his mind. Tori had seemed okay to him, for all that he had never seen her fight quite like that before. _Inefficient_ was the best description he could come up with, despite the fact that she had taken out three armed men in under thirty seconds. But G had actually been able to follow the fight, and that wasn’t much like Tori. If she wanted people out of action, they would be on the ground before anyone else could even react.

And she’d left them all alive.

They had been playing to an audience, though. And Kensi had called Tori’s next step in the plan almost perfectly. G wasn’t sure if he found that reassuring or disturbing, but at least everyone seemed to be on the same page, which meant they could proceed with the modified plan.

Seeing someone sitting on his doorstep, G’s first thought was the Iranians. Vaziri had enough men that he could have sent some to his house; but even Vaziri’s men couldn’t be stupid enough to wait so obviously for him, and the person was alone.

Still, he approached from the shadows until he was close enough to recognize the man wearing the two-toned red shirt. This was the second time Shane had sat and waited for G to come home. “Should I be warning the rest of my team that you’ll be visiting them tonight?” G asked, coming up the path to his front door.

“Do I need to?” Shane sounded as tired as he looked, with a sharp edge of distraction.

G didn’t reply to Shane’s smartass remark; the younger man stood and moved aside when it became clear to him that G was heading for the door. Distracted or not, Shane moved with the same boneless fluidity that Tori had when she wanted to be menacing. It was a screaming reminder that Shane, like Tori, was a ninja, effective as his college kid camouflage was. G opened the door and stepped aside to let Shane pass through ahead of him. Once inside, G led the way to the kitchen.

G had already opened the fridge to grab a pair of beers when it occurred to him that Shane wasn’t exactly an invited guest. G had somehow forgotten that between the front door and the kitchen, and that was an uneasy thought. He hesitated over the second bottle, casting another look at Shane. Now standing still, those hunched shoulders caught G’s eye and made him pull both bottles out of the fridge and twist the cap off one before holding it towards Tori’s friend. The beer would probably do as little for him as it did for Tori, but Tori, at least, seemed to appreciate the intent. Shane took the offered beer; he was paying more attention to G than to his surroundings, sort of. He seemed even more distracted than he’d been on G’s doorstep.

“Thanks,” Shane said, and then focused properly on G. “How is she?”

“Since when do you care?” G asked, leaning against the counter next to the fridge.

The streetlight filtering in through the blinds wasn’t amenable to reading facial expressions. G could just about tell that Shane’s smile was far from humorous. Something jagged and broken was showing through the wry expression. “If I checked in after every job she’d stop talking to me in about a month.”

The last – and first – time Shane showed up, they’d only had Tori for a couple of months. G crossed his arms. “Might do some good more than once every year and a half or so.”

“Just because you don’t hear about it, doesn’t mean we don’t talk,” Shane said evenly.

“Hm.” A thought occurred to G that hadn’t, before. That couldn’t, before Sam smacked him in the face with some harsh truths. What sort of a person was Shane, that dealing with him had equipped Tori to so casually untangle G’s problems? Eventually, G said: “She’s dealing.”

“Define ‘dealing’.”

Shane’s tone had a firm edge to it; it was definitely not a request. “She broke one guy’s knee, another guy’s shoulder, and a third’s jaw before threatening to kill me herself,” G said dryly.

“I hope they were at least trying to kill you. Tori doesn’t go for pain unless she’s on edge, and shoulders are a bad sign,” Shane said plainly.

“She knows the plan,” G replied.

Shane took a step towards him, making solid eye contact for maybe the first time that night. “The plan?” he repeated, voice low and dangerous and just barely not a threat. “She’ll make sure the plan works if it kills her, if that’s what matters. That your scale?”

G straightened, though Shane was still a few inches taller than him. “If she’d just stuck to the original plan, this wouldn’t be a problem right now,” he snapped.

Shane looked close to snarling something in response before reining himself in, taking a moment to re-evaluate G. When he spoke, there wasn’t any anger in his voice. “If she’d gone with that plan things would be way worse.”

“If she’d stuck with the plan, I could focus on what needs to be done and not worrying about her.”

Shane’s responding look was incredulous, the way Sam would look at Eric sometimes when he was doubting Eric’s sanity. “You worried about her getting shot or about _her?_ Because I gotta tell you, gotta be nice to still worry about little things like a bunch of bullets. Personally, I worry about the things that stick.”

“She’s dealt with people like Janvier before, and I’d have rather not found out what sticks from _this_ ,” G retorted, not backing down from Shane’s look.

Shane deflated and retreated a step. He looked tired and weighed down again, worse than before. This was, maybe, what Tori and he had looked like when they were nine years younger and carrying the burden of a secret war. “Nothing that hasn’t already been there,” he said quietly. “Don’t be angry with her.”

Cam had said nearly the same thing, in Yemen. G knew Tori a lot better now than he had then, even if sometimes it felt like he didn’t understand her any better. “I never said I was angry,” he replied neutrally.

Shane’s half-smile was just as broken as before. “That? I’d call it anger. Tori would call it anger. And she won’t know how to deal with it.” He sounded almost rueful.

G crossed his arms again. “She won’t have to deal with it.”

Shane didn’t look convinced. “She once did something she thought we would hate her for, because she thought it was necessary to protect the rest of us. It _was_ necessary, and she was so convinced we’d hate her, she didn’t really notice we didn’t.”

“Guess I’ll find out if she thinks I hate her if the microwave at her place tries to kill me,” G said blandly.

“No, you won’t. She’ll walk away.” Shane smiled again, rueful and soft this time. “She’s actually happy here.”

“No reason for that to change,” G said.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Deeks slid open the safety deposit box. “Got a lot of papers,” he told his comm. He picked up the brown envelope and weight it in his hand. It felt like a flash drive. “And what looks like the file,” he added. He opened the envelope and turned it over.

The item that dropped into his hand was indeed a flash drive, but it was hanging off a dolphin keychain. This was not Atley’s file.

Deeks sighed, and told the rest of the team: “Looks like somebody got here first.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vaziri placed a low-ball glass at the edge of the pool table before he said: “You and I need to talk, Ms. Hansen.”

She pointedly did not look at him or the glass as she lined up her next shot. “No, we don’t.” The balls rattled, skidding precisely across the felt. “You got your file. And your life.”

They were alone at this corner of the bar. Two days in, everyone at this dive already knew to leave her the hell be.

“The information in the file conflicts with what Atley told us,” Vaziri said. “And we no longer have access to Atley.”

She committed the next shot. “Sucks to be you. Still not my problem.”

“The file says that Cherokee was not the code name of a mole, but a psy-op designed to make us hunt down our own,” Vaziri said. “It says that the American asset was Janvier.”

The next ball missed its mark. Tori straightened, grabbed the glass, emptied it, and looked at Vaziri.

He smiled. “I thought that might get your attention.”

“NCIS could have gotten Atley,” she told him. “The Agency ordered the trade. They couldn’t have Janvier out of our hands fast enough. Didn’t want us to have him to begin with.”

“What are you saying?” Vaziri demanded.

Tori raised the empty glass, and placed it back back down.

Vaziri didn’t even raise an eyebrow before turning his head and gesturing at one of his mooks. The mook came over seconds later, carrying another serving of this dive’s priciest vodka for her, and what was probably club soda for Vaziri.

This time, Tori didn’t empty her drink all at once. “I’m saying the brass was sticking their noses into way too much detail, and the fucker was out of my sight for five minutes in there. I’m saying you and I both know that bastard’s too useful an asset for the CIA to risk his being killed off that easily.”

Vaziri’s eyebrows climbed up. “That’s one hell of a theory.”

She emptied the glass. “Got pen and paper?”

He produced a notepad and a pen and handed them to her.

“Callen would’ve shot him if I wouldn’t have,” she told Vaziri as she jotted down addresses. “He wasn’t quiet about it, either. If the Agency figured out how to game everyone...” She handed Vaziri his notebook and pen back. “They’d be keeping him at one of these addresses.”

Vaziri looked down at the list of fake safehouses, and then back at her.

“Going to ask how I know this?” she asked softly.

He considered her for a long moment. “After the last few days? No, Ms. Hansen, I won’t.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Iranians had found Janvier at one of the addresses Tori had given them, and they were moving in to extract him. Janvier was supposedly being protected by the CIA, so there was no need for their team to be out in the field. The four of them gathered at the boathouse to watch the final stage of the op on the plasma, in better privacy than Ops could give them.

Deeks was standing in the kitchen area, getting coffee and talking far too much. Kensi had given up on shushing him. It seemed like her idiot partner was deliberately trying to get himself killed by Sam. Or not so idiot; the air between G and Sam had been thick enough to cut with a knife for days.

“What did I miss?”

Kensi turned towards the door. So did everyone else. Tori walked in as if all eyes weren't on her, as if she hadn’t spent the last few days pretending to have gone rogue, as if she hadn’t damn near _really_ gone rogue. In a turquoise beach shirt over a pair of jeans and her hair neatly slicked back, she didn’t look as if she’d been living on the lam, either.

“Look who finally decided to show up,” G said. That airy tone of voice was not good news.

Tori snorted as she joined them by the table. “We ordering pizza or is there anything edible around here?”

That was off. Kensi tried to show nothing as she replayed it in her mind. Tori was flip, yes, but with none of the perkiness typical of her usual act. She also wasn’t in the habit of putting up that act with the team, anymore.

“Catch!” Deeks called, and tossed Tori a tub of ice cream from the freezer.

Tori caught it one-handed, flipped the lid off and then caught the spoon that Deeks tossed next between her fingers – all with the same hand, and with unselfconscious casualness. Kensi had seen Tori catch knives like that, when she was with her family.

That was what this looked like, Kensi realized. This was a lot more like the way Tori acted with her ninja family, than with her OSP team. She was also digging into the ice cream as if nothing was the matter, and neither of her partners seemed happy with her. Tori was not above deliberately ignoring either of her partners when she thought they were being idiots, but this didn’t look like that. This was about to go downhill, fast.

A burst of noise returned all of their attention to the plasma. The Iranians had made it to Janvier, and the NCIS agents pretending to be CIA agents were also pretending to fail miserably at their job.

“Looks like we won’t be hearing from him again any time soon,” Deeks commented, holding out a bag of pretzels towards Kensi.

“He’s not going to make it a week,” Tori said.

“The Iranians might make him suffer,” Sam said gruffly.

“Thought of that,” Tori said around a mouthful of ice cream. She swallowed, and continued. “Rigged his arteries. Not sure if the heart attack or the aneurysm would get him, and I don’t really care.”

_Good,_ Kensi thought. Deeks, on the other hand, choked on a pretzel.

“What,” he said once he recovered his breath, “handing him over to the people who’re going to torture him for information he doesn’t have wasn’t good enough?”

“Wasn’t safe enough,” Tori corrected him. “It’s not like we were going to take chances on this one.”

_We._ Kensi might have missed it if she hadn’t already noticed that Tori was ninja-like in ways she usually wasn’t, but she had. Kensi had been hanging around Rootcore enough that she’d gotten the brief on warning signs, and the _We_ was universally applicable across the Teams.

“Weren’t we?” Kensi asked, as neutrally as she could.

Tori shrugged. “Since he shot Renko. Whoever tries to kill someone just to get our attention doesn’t stop until they’re stopped, and there’s only one safe way to stop them.”

Sam didn’t seem happy about this at all.“That’s what you decided to kill him for?”

Judging by Tori’s look of slightly puzzled non-comprehension, she understood that Sam was upset but she had no idea why. It didn’t take Rootcore exposure to know how this was going to go wrong: either Tori would say something that would sit too wrong with Sam, or Sam would say something that would set Tori off.

Instead, G said: “Had a visitor the other night after the beach. You really should tell Shane I don't like surprises.”

_Way to come from left field,_ Kensi thought sarcastically.

Tori paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth. After a moment, moving slowly, she put the spoon back down and placed the tub on the table. She was frowning in concentration, attention turned inwards.

_Good news, bad news,_ Kensi thought. Tori seemed to be thawing out of the headspace she was in, but she was going to crash.

“What did he say?” Tori asked after a moment, wary and apprehensive.

“Wanted to know how we were handling things.”

Tori’s apprehension turned more tense. “And what did you tell him?”

“We were handling things.”

Typical G non-answer, that. At least it didn’t dig Tori deeper into the hole in her head. Except then Sam snapped: “You call this ‘handling’ things?”

Tori’s eyes darted to Sam; otherwise she was still as a statue. Kensi had seen _that_ look before. There was something fundamentally wrong about anyone giving Sam that look, let alone Tori. It was the look of someone who expected a blow to fall, and didn’t quite understand why.

“Are we really going to do it this way?” Deeks asked carefully.

“I don’t remember asking for your input,” Sam said.

That was seriously not helping. “At least Deeks has a clue,” Kensi told Sam sharply. “So maybe you’re the one who should back off right now before you say something you can’t take back.”

Sam stared at her. Tori was still frozen.

When G finally spoke again, his voice was soft, almost gentle, but there was steel underneath. “It was Hunter, wasn’t it.”

**_What_** _was Hunter?_ Kensi wondered, but Tori obviously understood, judging by the way her eyes turned wide, her shoulders dropped and she lost about ten years in one second. Then her expression closed off and she drew herself up.

“So did you figure that out just now, or did this just seem like a useful time to bring that up?”

The anger took Kensi by surprise. She was more-or-less following Tori’s reactions up until that point. This was unpredictable, and there was no way that indicated anything good.

“Can someone fill the rest of us in on what’s going on here?” Deeks asked.

“It was Hunter,” Tori spat.

“ _What_ was Hunter?” Kensi asked.

“Hunter was the reason Tori’s old team was captured,” Sam said.

Tori turned her head towards him. Only Sam could not flinch back under that stare. “Hunter did the capturing.”

For a few seconds, that didn’t even make sense. Then the penny dropped. _It was Hunter._ Hunter who was always within sight of either his brother or his husband, Hunter who was always first with a hand or a good word, in the one year she’d known him. _Hunter did the capturing._

Mind control had to be involved, somehow, but that didn’t make the idea turn Kensi’s stomach any less.

“And the torture?” Deeks asked, his tone harder than it usually was. “That him, too?”

Tori snorted. “What do you _think?_ ”

“You went after him,” G said. His tone was oddly flat, the way he usually got in interrogation when he’d figured everything out and was waiting for the rest of them to catch up. “But you let him live.”

“Turned out he wasn’t trying to kill anyone but himself at the time.”

“And that wasn’t good problem-solving,” Sam said bitingly.

“Sam!” Kensi snapped. She leaned forward, grasping the back of one of the chairs to give her hands something to do. She looked at Tori. “Please say that brainwash was involved.”

“Memory tap,” Tori said, clipped and short.

“Anyone with Google would know that the Thunder Rangers started out as bad guys,” Deeks said, openly exasperated.

The room was suddenly very quiet. Kensi knew – hard to not figure it out, given who she’d been spending her weekends with – and she knew that Deeks had figured it out, and probably Nell as well, but so far everybody had been excruciatingly careful to not say anything explicit.

“ _What?_ ” Sam asked.

Tori’s mood swung again, this time from anger to shock. She didn’t look like she’d be finding words any time soon – and even if she would, Kensi didn’t want to know.

“Power Rangers, Sam,” she said, more harshly than she intended. “Colour-coded superheroes, big battle mecha, been operating in California and Oregon for the past nineteen years?”

Well, shit. Sam and G _really_ didn’t know.

“Really, guys?” Deeks asked. “You’re her partners. All you had to do was Google ‘Blue Bay Harbor’ and ‘2003’. Seriously, Tori, sit down, you look like you’re about to fall over.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t look it, and she definitely didn’t sound it.

“Power Rangers,” G repeated.

“Urban legends,” Sam said, crossing his arms.

“Need me to morph?” Tori asked.

“No,” Kensi said sharply, before Sam could say something else stupid. Half a year later, both the wizarding and ninja teams were still giving Cam hell for that one cold morph he’d pulled when the samurai team was out. Not that Kensi knew it was called a _morph_ before that moment. “Even I know that a cold morph is a fucking stupid idea.”

G’s chair rattled as he pushed himself up. “You’re going to sit down,” he told Tori as he stepped behind Sam and walked over to her. “You do look like you’re going to fall over, Power Ranger or not.”

Tori didn’t insist that she was fine as G led her to the couch, but she didn’t cling or lean against him, either.

And Kensi had thought that this week sucked before.


	10. Out Of The Bag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for." - Norman Schwarzkopf

They’d left Tori and G on the couch and Deeks rummaging around for the cocoa mix and went out to the end of the pier. She and Sam were going to yell at one another, Kensi knew, and nobody else needed to hear that.

Well. Nobody else from her team.

She whipped out her other phone, pointedly ignoring the look Sam directed at the grinning dragon logo of Cam’s company. Nick picked up before the phone could properly ring.

“What’s going on?” he asked brusquely.

“We need to borrow one of your guys,” she told him. “My stubborn, pig-headed _coworker_ here needs a Ranger 101.”

Beat. “I’m not even going to ask how that came up. I do, however, need to know which of your stubborn, pig-headed teammates we’re talking about.”

“The one whose red shirts my partner is going to cut to ribbons.”

“Right,” Nick agreed. “Tori upset enough for Shane or Cam to notice?”

Kensi hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “G was being not an ass last I saw and Shane paid him a visit last night.”

“Probably not Cam and I’ll talk to Shane. All right, someone’ll be over in a few. Stay safe.”

“Who was that?” Sam demanded.

“Vida’s Red,” she snapped, and added: “And brother-in-law.”

“Red as in Red Power Ranger,” Sam said. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Team leader. They’re almost always Red.”

“And now you answer to their hierarchy.”

“What is wrong with you today? No, Sam, I don’t answer to Ranger hierarchy, but you need a lecture and I don’t know enough to give it to you.”

“Seems to me like you know a lot.”

“Seems to me like you have your head up your ass.”

Sam didn’t get a chance to reply. A glowing streak was cutting across the ocean fast. Seconds later, a column of water rose up and came back down on the pier, turning into Maddie.

“The hell?” Sam squeaked.

Maddie smiled at him. “Hi, I’m Maddie. Vida’s sister? You must be Sam.”

Sam stared at her hand as if it was a snake.

Maddie ignored that and looked at Kensi. “Catch me up? All Nick said was that the R word is out of the bag and you guys could use some answers.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The quickest way to know how Tori was doing, G had learned over the past year, was to touch her. Normally, Tori would either casually lean against Sam or him, or cling briefly and then disengage. On bad days she would cling and stay, and on the really bad days she wouldn’t be touched at all.

She let him lead her to the couch, and she drew up her knees and curled up against him without a second thought, but this didn’t fit into the usual patterns. She was holding herself back, but she was also there.

He was obviously doing something wrong, but he didn’t know what.

With nothing to go on, he went for the defaults. He nudged her shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay.” _You’re safe_ would’ve usually been the next words, but – “We’re okay,” he said instead.

And that was the right way to go, because she relaxed a little.

“We’re okay,” he repeated.

“Damn right we are,” Deeks said too loudly from the kitchen. “And here comes the hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate does not say things are fine,” Tori muttered.

“What was that?” Deeks said as he came over. He handed G one mug, and then sat down on the coffee table while he waited for Tori to straighten a little.

“Apparently hot chocolate means we’re not fine,” G said.

“On the contrary,” Deeks said. He handed Tori her mug. “It means we’re fine _now._ ”

“Deeks, I’m impressed. That actually sounded like valid logic.”

The idle chatter did its thing. G was pretty sure that it was that, and not the hot chocolate, that made Tori relax the rest of the way into something more like her usual self.

“You _did_ eat these past few days, I hope,” Deeks asked, voice still deliberately light.

G was at the wrong angle to see the look that Tori gave Deeks. Deeks raised his arms surrender-like, but he didn’t seem alarmed or stressed as he said, “Hey, I was just asking. Have mercy on my shoes.”

Yeah, Tori didn’t like that joke, at least not at the moment. “Deeks,” G said warningly.

Deeks pointed at him. “You don’t get to talk.” Tori didn’t like that, either, and this flinch was obvious enough for Deeks to see. “I’m just saying,” he added.

Tori made an unintelligible sound, and straightened a little. She turned her head to look at G, meeting his eyes straight on. “For the record, I’m not sorry.”

“Yeah,” he replied evenly. “I figured that.”

She gave him a dubious look.

“Not angry with you,” he told her, because apparently this needed to be said.

She still didn’t look convinced. “Sam is.”

Deeks huffed.

“He’s worried about you,” G pointed out to her. “He gets all cranky when he’s worried, you know that.”

Tori looked down at her hot chocolate.

Sam _was_ upset, just not at Tori. But G didn’t think that Tori would appreciate it any better that Sam was upset over her being a Ranger.

_Power Rangers._ The name was utterly ridiculous, but then, it was also terribly fitting, at least according to what G knew.

“I’m not sorry,” she repeated. “Even if Sam doesn’t like it. It needed doing.”

She was tense, again. There was something here that he was definitely missing; or maybe, he thought, Shane’s words coming back to him, that wasn’t the problem at all.

“Um, what needed doing?” Deeks asked. “Because I’m not following.”

“I wasn’t going to let him get G,” Tori told him. Then she turned her head to G again. “I’m not going to. Not ever. Sometimes you remind me of him so much, you know? And I can’t do this, I’m not Shane. I’m not –”

He cut her off. “Tor. It’s okay.” It wasn’t, not remotely: _Sometimes you remind me of him so much._ But she was still sitting next to him on the couch, half-pressed into him. He had no idea how she could do this, and he didn’t want to think about what _I’m not Shane_ implied. “I was an idiot and you did the right thing.”

“And if Sam doesn’t get over himself, we’ll beat him up for you,” Deeks told her. “Three to one, even the big guy’s not gonna like those odds.”

Tori snorted. “The Team always wins.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing to do was to identify the source of conflict. As Maddie listened to Kensi recap the past few days, she decided that Tori wasn’t actually a side to that. It was _about_ Tori though, at least nominally. Sam was upset, and he seemed scared – the sort of scared that Cam was, for people’s safety. Kensi gave a good brief of how they ended up here, which Maddie needed to know; but she also needed to know what Sam thought was happening, because that’s where the conflict was.

She turned to him. “It seems we have a misunderstanding. Or a few.” That was usually a safe opening. Usually she would add a very small smile, but Sam was angry and probably felt that his anger was not heard or understood. She didn’t want to make him feel even more isolated. “Did Tori talk to you about colour roles?”

“She didn’t call them that,” Sam replied. He was standing very straight, feet planted firmly and his arms crossed. It didn’t get more confrontational than that without getting hands-on.

“It was probably difficult to explain without really explaining,” she said. Mildly, plainly; no adding fuel.

“Funny. I understood just fine.”

That attitude was going to be a problem. You couldn’t talk to someone who didn’t want to talk to you. Maddie didn’t get to try and find a way out of that, though, because Kensi reacted first.

“You barely hit the tip of the iceberg, Sam,” Kensi said.

She’d made a mistake by making a general statement instead of asking a specific question, Maddie decided. But it wasn’t too late to fix that. “What did Tori call it, if not ‘colour roles’?” she asked. It was a little too much like good cop-bad cop, which was all fine for interrogation but lousy for mediation, but she was pretty sure that Kensi would stop pushing back if Sam stopped upsetting the balance. Kensi was enough of a Green.

“Gestalt,” Sam said. “Reinforced by the Power.” He said the word _power_ as if it was something foul.

The ninjas had a complicated relationship with the Grid. Her own team had never been failed by the Power itself – only by their own laziness, once – but the ninjas had been, and yet they’d dug deeper into the Colours than any other team. Tori had never voiced that ambivalence once in the six years Maddie has known her, but it was there. It must have bled through when she’d tried explaining this to Sam.

What would Colour interplay sound like, filtered through that perception, with no –

– that might not be a bad place to start. “Did Tori mention Team sense?”

“Team sense,” he repeated, dubious and hostile.

Figures that Tori would leave that out. The ninja Team had needed that explained to them; things had gone wrong for them too early for them to learn to trust to Team sense. And the best way to explain it, Maddie reflected, was the way the Chad had explained it to the ninjas all those years back. “When people study martial arts, they need to learn to hit hard enough to hurt themselves,” she said, carefully. “That’s actually hard to do.”

“What’s your point?” Sam asked.

“Rangers of the same team can’t hurt one another any more than an unconditioned person will punch a wall hard enough to break his fingers,” she told him. “We have a whole lot of power over one another, I won’t say we don’t, but unless something truly extreme happens, we’re also pretty much incapable of abusing it.” She paused, just long enough to let the idea settle, and continued. “Tori recognizes you as team. The power that Colour roles has is real to her, even though you’re not Rangers. But you don’t have Team sense.”

Kensi didn’t seem too shocked but then, Maddie thought ruefully, they’d had to explain some of this to Kensi already. Rootcore was where most people came for safety, and that meant that Maddie’s team had to be sure that Kensi would be safe to the more vulnerable Rangers on their worse days.

As for Sam –

Maddie tried to appear as if she wasn’t eying him critically. He seemed to not be actively angry, but he was still upset. Not angry was very good, though. She hadn’t been entirely sure that he wouldn’t lash out at her. Tori thought the world of him, she knew, but Tori also thought of him as a Yellow, and Tori’s template for a Yellow was _Dustin._ That was the problem, really. If Sam reminded Maddie of any Yellow she knew then it was fighter-jet pilot Taylor, or openly confrontational Aisha. Dustin was more conflict-averse than most _Pinks_.

“You’re saying we’re not safe for her.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Non-Rangers are decent to each other all the time. But learning to trust non-Rangers can be kinda hard. And then...” She hesitated, and glanced at Kensi on instinct.

“And then you forget we’re not actually Rangers,” Kensi said dryly. “Sounds familiar, Sam?”

Sam scowled, but didn’t seem any more upset than before. “That’s not the same thing.”

“That’s kind of the problem,” Kensi said. “You’re not a Ranger, she’s not a SEAL, and you’re both crazy.”

That scowl looked suspiciously sheepish, and then settled back. “I’m not a Ranger. Kensi’s not a Ranger. So what happens when we do screw up? What happens when G does?”

And that was another thing that Tori had probably misrepresented when she’d tried to explain Colour roles. “If your team leader will screw up Tori will probably yell at him and do what she thinks is right,” Maddie said dryly. “She’s been doing it to Shane for years.”

“And recently to us,” Kensi muttered.

But Sam’s expression turned darker. “The way it looks to me? She gets she might get hurt just fine. She just doesn’t get that it’s _wrong._ And if I believe you, then ten minutes ago – ”

Ten minutes before, he’d probably hurt Tori, and Tori was probably in no shape to understand that Sam might have been in the wrong.

“Talking about it actually helps,” Maddie said quietly. “She’ll listen to you. You can also use that to point out that sometimes you could be wrong.”

The last of the anger eased out of Sam’s body. He snorted softly. It sounded mostly like laughter, but it had the background of tears. He glanced back up the pier, probably towards the boathouse where the rest of their team was.

“And don’t forget the three cardinal rules of Ninja Ranger handling,” Kensi said dryly.

Maddie groaned. “You are picking up on _all_ of Xander’s bad habits.”

“Well, I am supposedly a Green,” Kensi retorted, and then turned to her teammate. “And Xander handles Cam, so he knows what he’s talking about. Only three rules: keep a full fridge, an open door, and open arms.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Seriously, Deeks?” Kensi said. “You have a machine that can make any food on this world as well as from _other_ worlds, and you ask for coffee that came out of a rodent’s ass?”

“And what was the first thing you had it make, eh? A giant pool of grease you claimed to be food?” Deeks retorted. “Besides, this only _tastes_ like civet coffee.”

Sam rolled his eyes as the two of them continued to bicker over Tori’s not-a-microwave. The team gravitated to Tori’s houseboat after Maddie had left. They still needed to talk, everyone was hungry, and Deeks was being insufferable about wanting to see the infamous “mutant microwave” besides. Deeks was also supposed to be using it to get ingredients for dinner, but he’d insisted he needed to test the machine first to ‘get the hang of it’. Sam wasn’t entirely sure he trusted anything that came out of the device, but he didn’t have a lot of options, since Tori’s kitchen could best be described as ‘barren’.

He shouldn’t have been surprised; he’d been to her boat before, and knew her usual relationship with food. Especially in the summer, when her husband was traveling. But he’d never paid attention to the kitchen itself--the room itself was on the small side, but it was a house boat after all, and Tori and Blake were both lean, with Tori tall for a woman and Blake short for a guy. There was one pot, one cast-iron pan, a wok, and a single burner. And knives. Just on the countertop, Sam counted four butcher blocks of knives, and the first drawer he’d opened looking for a spatula contained even more. The second drawer contained a collection of pizza wheels--why anyone needed more than one was beyond Sam, except pizza wheels were notoriously sharp and Tori and her husband obviously liked sharp objects. The third drawer contained ice cream scoops and twine. He shoved it closed with a frustrated sigh.

“Do you own any cooking utensil that’s primary purpose isn’t cutting things?” Sam asked Tori, who was at the other end of the kitchen with G.

“Spoons are in there,” Tori said, pointing at a cupboard. “And there’s a couple of spatulas and a ladle around here somewhere.”

He opened the cupboard she indicated. There was a dolly with spoons, spatulas, and ladles. He took one of the spatulas--a sturdy metal handle and a wide, flat metal face--and closed the cabinet. “How do you cook anything in here?” he grumbled, putting the cast-iron pot on the single burner as Deeks started piling ingredients next to it on the limited counter space. “This is an armory, not a kitchen.”

“We have a Synthetron,” Tori pointed out, and then shrugged. “Blake likes to cook sometimes.”

“Dude, if I had a Synthetron, I wouldn’t have a kitchen either,” Deeks said, pulling out a bowl of steaming rice.

Sam scowled at the rice. “Are you actually going to let me cook anything or are you just going to make the whole damn meal using that thing?” he asked Deeks.

“Just trying to speed things along,” Deeks replied.

“Sam,” G said warningly, putting an arm around Tori’s shoulders. She leaned back against him. She was still paler than usual, and weary-looking.

“Oh, hey, uh, Kensi, maybe we should go get that thing from the car,” Deeks said, sliding past G and Tori out of the kitchen. Sam knew an excuse when he heard one, but at least with Deeks out of the room there was room enough for Sam to move and not bump into things.

“It’s safe,” Tori said. She gestured in the direction of the cooked rice and steamed vegetables. “And it tastes well enough.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Vegetables shouldn’t come out of a machine.”

Tori gave him an uncomprehending look as G rolled his eyes. “Lay off it, Sam.”

Tori elbowed G; G grunted softly, but she probably hadn’t done it hard enough to break anything. Sam frowned. She was still leaning against G, still looking at Sam like he’d grown a second head, but she’d just told G to back down even though they were on the same side.

“Guess there’s no reason I should bother cooking, then,” Sam said.

Tori frowned and pushed away from G, putting herself at half-distance between them. Her shoulders were pitched high, tense. “Are we fighting?” she asked, no sign of weariness in her voice. “About – because I have no idea what we’re fighting about, here.”

“No one’s fighting,” G said, reaching out to touch her arm. She flinched away from his touch, and he let his hand drop. Sam resisted the urge to snort, because from where he was standing, this was definitely turning into a fight if it wasn’t already.

“Don’t say it if it isn’t true,” Tori snapped at G. “That’s not helping.” She turned her head to Sam. She looked frustrated, like he was some sort of complicated puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out though she’d been trying for days. “You’re going to have to help me out here, because I’ve got no idea why you’re angry.”

_Angry_ wasn’t the right word for what Sam was feeling, but it was probably the closest emotion. “Why don’t we start with Westerman,” Sam said, keeping his tone even.

“Seriously?” G asked.

Tori’s head snapped to him. Her shoulders fell and relaxed as her body shifted into a ready stance. “Seriously,” she said sharply. “Wasn’t a whole lot of fun when I snatched _your_ prey, was it?” She turned back to Sam. “I’m not sorry. I knew it was going to hurt you and I’m not sorry, because that was the right thing to do. People make shit decisions where Team and family are involved. I do what needs be done.” Her face twisted. “No matter the price.”

G’s expression shifted from stormy to sudden clarity as Tori spoke. He reached out for her again. “We don’t hate you, Tori,” he said, slow and measured, before looking towards Sam. “Right, Sam?”

Sam rocked back in surprise. “Why would you think we hated you?” he asked.

Tori gave him a narrow, disbelieving look in response. She’d shot G an angry look, though she hadn’t shrugged away from him this time.

“Am I pissed? Yes,” Sam said. “But that doesn’t mean I hate you.”

A fraction of the tension eased from her stance, but she still didn’t look like she believed him. He’d hoped she’d say something, but instead she looked like she was expecting a blow to fall and wasn’t planning on stopping it.

“What will it take for you to believe me?” Sam asked.

“I tricked you into betraying your family, I went rogue on this case, and if you think the Synthetron is an unnatural abomination then I have a good fucking idea what you make of the rest of my fucking life. Care to try again?”

He didn’t miss the bitterness in her voice, but Sam couldn’t deny that some aspects of Tori’s life freaked him out. “You’re right, the rest of your life does bother me. But we’ve been partners for how long now, and it hasn’t stopped me?” He paused, considering his next words carefully. Tori had gotten it into her head that he cared more about a SEAL team he barely knew than his own partners. “We’re Team. I’m still going to be there to catch you.”

He waited to see if she remembered that conversation on the beach in Romania. _I’ve done so much pulling back that I think I’m going to topple over too, one of those days, and I won’t even know it,_ she’d said, referring to their collective effort at keeping G tethered – _Sometimes he reminds me of Hunter,_ and there was a thought that wasn’t going to stop angering Sam any time in this life.

For several long seconds it looked as though this wasn’t connecting. Then the anger and defensiveness melted out of Tori, shoulders dropping, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. His statement surprised her, apparently, and there was more emotions behind the shock that Sam picked out as the seconds ticked by. There was some sort of terror there, but it didn’t extend to her shoulders; and something else, that wasn’t hope, but –

“C’mere,” he said, holding one arm up in an invitation for a hug. She stepped into it, and as he wrapped his arms around her, he could feel her entire body tremble then shake. He met G’s gaze over the top of Tori’s head; he didn’t look relieved, not precisely, but the tension was gone from him, too. G nodded once at him, and Sam returned it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Truth was, G wasn’t sure how they were doing. It hadn’t been three hours since Sam and Tori almost fell apart over what was – best that G could understand – a colossal misunderstanding. Kensi and Deeks just might have saved the situation from further disaster (again, G acknowledged grudgingly) by ordering burgers and fries for everyone.

Tori even made a valiant attempt to eat the vegetables that came in the bun. It was a little harder to be relieved at that with Sam’s never-ending complaints about neither of them ever eating enough vegetables suddenly echoing in his ears.

Skating on thin ice had nothing on how uncertain everything about Tori suddenly seemed.

Deeks and Kensi had left a while ago, taking the trash with them. The three of them were out on the deck. Tori had fallen asleep on Sam at some point, curled up on the bench seat. It maybe hadn’t fully registered with G how respectful of people’s boundaries Tori actually was, most of the time, until she’d gone and done something like that.

Tori’s sleep was good, solid. G had watched her sleep enough times to know. Sam looked as if he thought that Tori’s sleep was baby-light, and breathing too loudly might wake her up. It wouldn’t be good for them to stay like that all night – if Tori would sleep the night through. She mostly did, nowadays, when it was G next to her, but they had never tested that with Sam, and it had taken her long enough to get used to G.

Sam needed to not see the aftermath of Tori’s nightmares. Definitely not that night.

“Let’s get her downstairs,” G said in a low voice.

“I don’t mind,” Sam said, keeping his voice equally low.

“She won’t wake,” G told him. _Not from that. Not right now._ Then, to press the point, he got up from the bench.

Predictably, unsurprisingly, Tori curled up more into Sam, making up for the lost warmth.

Sam frowned a little, but he maneuvered himself into a position where he could scoop Tori up. He grunted as he shifted to his feet. G sympathized. Tori weighed a full twenty pounds more than any person her size had a right to.

They walked downstairs to the bedroom in silence.

“Don’t let go,” G cautioned as Sam placed her on the bed. He walked around Sam and into the room. No go bag in sight. He started pulling drawers open. If that blanket wasn’t here, they had a problem.

“G?” Sam asked.

G glanced back at him.

“Looking for something?” Sam asked.

“Her blanket,” G said.

That blanket was of murky origins, at best. Turquoise-blue, with an intricate pattern G couldn’t decipher and made out of some soft material even Hettie couldn’t name, it had just shown up among Tori’s things. It only took touching the thing to know that it was some sort of magic: it felt as though someone had woven ocean breeze and summer sunlight into fabric. G privately thought it felt like Tori herself; Sam would usually circle at a distance of three feet rather than come near the blanket. It had taken several weeks of wading through answers like “I woke up and it was there” to piece together a story, and G still wasn’t sure what had happened there.

The blanket had apparently been made by Jayden, who G last knew as the guy Tori tore into after he’d apparently failed from stopping some monsters from getting to LA. What was less clear was since when did Jayden and Tori got along; it might have had something to do with Tori saving someone’s life. Best G managed to understand, Jayden seemed to believe that; Tori mostly insisted that she would’ve let that person die if Cam had not been creative with some truths. It was entirely possible that Jayden and Tori still didn’t actually like one another.

“That thing gives me the creeps,” Sam said.

“I know,” G acknowledged, “but it gets the job done.” Tori never failed to fall or stay asleep under the thing.

Oh, there it was. G picked it up carefully and turned around. He covered Tori from the ankles up, giving Sam plenty of time to get out of the way. He watched Tori’s face carefully, but the transition went smoothly.

G put his hand on her shoulder – just for a moment, just to feel her breathe – and then turned to Sam and nodded towards the door.

Sam nodded back.

There was more than one bedroom on the houseboat. G had done the math. The houseboat didn’t look it at first glance, but eight people could sleep there, and the interior design made for easy lines of sight between rooms.

“She won’t wake from us talking,” he told Sam once they’d moved a room. “Strange voices, yeah. Familiar ones, no.”

“Hell of a week,” Sam said, still keeping his voice pitched low.

“Yes,” G agreed. “What the hell do we do, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. “Only one choice, as far as I can see.”

G didn’t like the sound of that. “And that is?”

“Make it work.”

Holding his elbows didn’t send out any good messages but, hell. It was just Sam.

“She needs this, G. You, me, us. Maybe you and I are the last two to figure that one out, but maybe that makes it more real,” Sam said.

That last word hit like a gut punch. “Real,” G repeated. It tasted bitter, too.

“When was the last time you felt like she was taking advantage of this?” Sam asked, gesturing around them.

G stared at him. “What?”

“I won’t pretend that I understand this any more than you do, G, but we have to try and be what she needs.”

_And how is that real, Sam?_ G swallowed the words, barely. Sam was just trying to do what he always did, talk G back from a ledge. He glanced back instinctively. He couldn’t see Tori’s face from this angle, but the lines of her body under the blanket were loose. He’d gotten used to this. Gotten used to being allowed in like this, gotten used to –

He forced himself to look away. This wasn’t about Tori taking advantage of _him._ The idea was ludicrous. Sam had to know that. Sam had pointed the problem out to G days ago, and G hadn’t listened. The scene earlier in the kitchen had been pretty damn convincing.

That brought something up in sharp detail. Some parts of this were far too real. “She ate the vegetables,” G said slowly.

“What?” Sam asked.

“The vegetables that came with the hamburger,” G said. “She tried to eat them.”

“Am I supposed to complain about this?” Sam asked. “You’d think I was twisting both your arms over something – ”

Sam’s expression froze as he made the connection.

“I thought we should try and be what she needs, Sam,” G said, a little nastily. “I’m glad to hear you know how to do that, because...” _I certainly don’t._ Except Shane had implied otherwise, and no matter what G thought of the guy – no matter what Tori had implied – everything Shane had to say had been spot-on so far.

“How to do it? No,” Sam replied. “You’re the one who gets it right on instinct, G. And maybe I need to lay off the vegetables, but she...” He looked distinctly uncomfortable before continuing. “Someone has to set boundaries.”

There was something about the way he said that. G frowned. “Maddie say that’s your role?”

Sam didn’t meet G’s eyes when he answered. “She said that’s what Yellows usually do.”

Yes, Maddie had said that and yes, Sam still hated this. Both were good to know. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he told Sam, truthfully.

“Tori seems to think you’re doing a decent job of it most of the time,” Sam offered. “And she doesn’t hold back when she doesn’t.”

G snorted. He couldn’t help it. “She calls me out on bad operational decisions. When she thought I might screw up on a personal level, she talked to you.”

“Barely,” Sam replied. “Kensi was kind enough to point out that there’s always what she called a base trio, G. Red, Yellow, Blue.”

“At least _Kensi_ knows what she’s doing. Do we know what the hell she is, anyway?”

“Green, apparently,” Sam said. His mouth twisted into a smirk. “And Deeks is Pink.”

That put a new spin on things. “Had he been wearing those awful shirts for _Tori?_ ” G reconsidered. “Small wonder she hates your wardrobe.”

“I’m not changing my wardrobe,” Sam said, crossing his arms.

“Try wearing blue. It works for me.” G had been thinking while they were talking, though. He’d borrowed clothes from Tori’s guest closet enough times to know which shelf belonged to whom, and –

– G went to the room across, opened said closet and pulled out one of the Tori-and-Blake-sized shirts that was, nevertheless, neither turquoise, navy blue or black. “Cam is Green.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “So now we’re taking advice on a stable partnership from Kensi?”

“Think of it this way. Kensi will not assume that either of us cannot possibly screw up.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Last summer had started with Romania. Deeks hadn’t thought it was possible for things to get worse than that for the team, but Janvier had proved him wrong on that one. Lauren Hunter was dead, barely a year after she’d temporarily stepped into Hettie’s role. Deeks hadn’t thought the revelation of Tori’s status as a Power Ranger would have hit Sam and G quite as hard as it had, but those three had been on shaky ground for most of May. But for all that, this summer had been better, overall, than the aftermath of Romania.

Four and a half months after that, Deeks had other concerns. He was out of paperwork. So was the rest of his team. Worse, they’d been out of paperwork for three days. They all stocked up on paperwork on purpose specifically so that they would have something to do during dry spells. This was a _particularly_ dry spell, though, and it didn’t look like it might ease up over the next few days. They would make it through the afternoon, somehow – mostly by hustling each other – but the next day, Deeks knew, things would start getting bad. Hettie could more-or-less turn a blind eye so long as they only harassed each other, but when things started spilling out to the rest of OSP, a reprimand was sure to follow.

Tori got up and left her desk. Deeks didn’t notice, really, until he saw that she was approaching Hettie’s corner office. Sam straightened at the same time that he did.

“What is it?” G asked.

“Tori,” Sam hissed.

“What is she doing talking to Hettie?”

The four of them gathered by the partition. The corner office was too far away to hear anything – as none of _them_ had supernaturally sharp hearing – but they could see just damn fine. Tori attempted to have the conversation standing, but Hettie frowned and gestured for her to sit down. It was a moment before Tori obliged.

“Uh-oh,” Deeks muttered.

“That’s not good,” Sam said.

“Kensi?” G asked.

His partner shook her head. “I can’t read Hettie, and Tori has her back to us.”

“Did Tori _ever_ initiate a conversation with Hettie?” Deeks asked.

“I don’t think so,” G admitted.

“Wait, is that –?” Kensi squinted.

“That’s the wrong cell phone,” Sam said.

They all had GTI phones nowadays – Eric had finally caved after Nell had had the R Word Conversation with him – but the tech that Cam’s company dealt with over the table was still not the Ranger-grade stuff, even if Eric reported that what they got was three grades above what was officially ordered, and Tori still kept both phones.

“Think we’re going to be loaned out to the ninjas?” Deeks asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kensi said.

“The wizards?” he asked hopefully.

“You wish.”

“Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?”

Tori shut the phone, put it away, and then pushed herself up to her feet. The four of them dispersed quickly, trying – and probably failing, as this was _Hettie_ – to appear as if they hadn’t been spying.

“It has come to my attention,” Hettie said when she and Tori arrived at the bullpen, “that you have all filed your expense and case reports to the last. Is that true?”

“Yes, it is,” G confirmed.

“Well, in that case,” Hettie said, “it has been suggested,” and she glanced at Tori, who was looking _entirely_ too smug, under that fake innocent expression, “that it would be better for you all to go on a road trip, before you attempt to burn the place down out of sheer boredom.”

“Road trip?” G asked.

“Are we off to meet the wizards?” Deeks asked hopefully.

“Xander and Clare are usually around,” Tori said.

“I’ll leave you to hash it out,” Hettie said, and walked away.

“Xander and Clare,” Kensi repeated. Then her face lit up. “ _Awesome._ ”

She and Tori exchanged a look. Deeks knew that look.

“I’m glad that you two are playing nice and all, but it worries me,” G said, crossing his arms and giving Tori a stern look. “Tori?”

“You’ll love it,” she promised. “It’s even still in California. Just be here tomorrow at eight. Justin’s car will pick us up.”

Under different circumstances, Deeks would have taken “Justin’s car” to mean “Justin’s limo, with a driver.” However, these were Tori circumstances, and they were officially off to see the wizards. And maybe he was risking his sneakers, but the alternative was to let Sam ask this question – the big guy was wearing that face again – and they had a collective effort going on to prevent Sam from asking certain kinds of questions.

“And when you say ‘Justin’s car’...” Deeks deliberately let the sentence hang.

Tori gave him a thoroughly confused look. It might have even been real, this time.

“Yes, Deeks,” G said. “I think she means Justin’s _car._ ”

“Is the car a zord in disguise?”

“Sort of?”

And then, finally, Sam had had enough. “What do you mean, _sort of?_ ”

Tori stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story started out as sanity-saving measures in the process of writing another, and grew from there. We're both kind of looking at each other like "..." over the internet right now.
> 
> Admittedly, we'd been looking at each other like "..." a lot during this story, but for a whole other reason. That reason is you guys, the readers. The hit counts on this story have been a source of never-ending wonder and glee for us, and we'd like to thank you for that. We'd also love to know who you are! 
> 
> Thank you for coming along for the ride, and we hope you enjoyed!


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